What did I do this weekend?

Well, I went to the ¤hªL Night market, which is the biggest one in the city. While there , I saw an ear candling demonstration. This is something where they get you to lay your head sideways on a pillow, then they stick a hollow candle in your ear, and light the tip of it on fire. The candle isn't an ordinary one, it is a hollow clyindrical shape, the inside lined with cloth and the outside parafin wax. The lighting effect is supposed to create a reverse vaccuum in your eardrum, the pressure forcing internal earwax to come out into the center of the candle. When completed, the demonstrators remove the candle and cut it open, showing tons of cruddy olde earwax inside....globs of nasty looking stuff. You won't believe the amount of crap that's inside peoples ears.

Having seen this on chinese news before, and somehow thinking that makes it reputable (hindsight is 20/20). I decided to go for it and get my ears cleaned and earwax removed. Part of my motivation was also that when coming to taiwan, my ears feel like they were producing more wax due to the polution, and I've been going through more cotton swabs than ever before. It's also been itching a bit more, becoming particualrly annoying after I go swimming for some reason. Anyways, I saw tons of people doing it... saw what I believed was alot of cruddy wax coming out of their ears, and figured it was only about $15 cdn...what the hey.

When the guy started doing it to me..it didn't really hurt, but felt a bit weird. I heard the burning of the candles..and some kind of misty sounds..thats about it. I wasn't supposed to move or talk during the process. When both ears were all said and done, the guy cut open the candles and fair enough...tons of ear cruddy wax inside them. Couldn't believe my ears could hide that much. My ears had a slight pain after doing that, and everything sounded so loud. I thought this was because of all the crap removed from my ears... why everything was louder. Other then that, everything felt about the same as before.

By the next day, the pain went away, and my hearing was normal. I decided to do some research on the internet for ear candling after the fact (smart move eh?), instead of beforehand like i usually do. I found out that ear candling is a scam. The lighting of the candles doesn't create enough suction/pressure to remove the wax from your eardrum. Furthermore, if it did, it might damage your eardrums as the was is stuck onto it. Also, the was I saw inside the candles is is wax from the burnt candle, and not wax from my ears. Some guy on the net burnt 2 candles side by side...one inside a guys ear, and one outside of it. Once completed, the insides of both candles looked the same.... cruddy old wax inside that looks like old earwax. A doctor looked into the ear before and after candling, and said there appeared to be the same amount of wax inside the ear before and after the candling process.

Man did i feel scammed.... I'm the dumbest engineer I know. I'm usually pretty cautious about these things so I"m surprised I was taken. Fooled by a Small time scam from a small time man. I should've asked him to burn a candle not in someone's ear to see what it would've looked like. At least my ears weren't damaged like some people I've read about. The loud sounds I was hearing was probably due to the candle pushing my eardrums for 15 minutes, and not from clarity caused by removed wax. You learn from your mistakes, at least mine only cost 15 bucks. Now I need to learn to say scam artist in chinese, and go back to the man for a payback visit. Word to the wise, Keep your heads up folks, if it's too good to be true..it probably is.

What was I talking about last? Oh Right.... the Dike and his partner..... right.... where was I???

The next day I had to work.... so I was expecting to meet the Dike after work to take him to dinner and some sightseeing stuff. He was chilling at my place while I was working, and said he just wanted to stay there catch up on some laundry and computer stuff (pictures etc...). Anyways, I give him a call at noon, say I'll meet him after work around 6 , and that I'll call back in a few hours to confirm. I call back home around 3pm to hear my roomate pick up, and tell me he left with his female travel parter and her friend. I thought that he'd give me a call to tell me what's going on....but nope. 6pm rolls around and I'm still at work..waiting....nothing...no ring. So I call his phone (long distance albeit as he is roaming) and no answer.... call back in 10 and still no answer. I've been waiting at work an hour past closing time and tired of it - I'm going home.  I get a call from the Dike a few hours later, asking him to meet me on the other side of town, where I just was..to meet him. He said he was with girls and just lost track of time. I guess when you say you're gonna stay home, and that I'll call back in a few hours, your natural intuition is to go out and forget your plans and not inform the people who made plans with your of your actions. Understood.  Noticeably annoyed, I said no thanks and hung up. Anyways... he didn't crash at my place that night...... someone has been sleeping around..he he he.... 

So I had a visitor from Vancouver come recently to visit me this weekend. He was  going to stay here from Thursday to Tuesday,  so I tried to plan my weekend to accommodate his visit and show him around town. For the sake of confidentiality, I won't name him, but will tell you his first name rhymes with "like" and his last name Starts with an "L" and ends with a "G" and he drives a 1996 burgundy Acura Integra with stick shift. I'm sure you all know tons of people that match that exact same description so you won't be able to accurately guess who he really is.

Anyways, Dike, as I'm going to call him, lands into the airport at 11am on Thursday. The Dike says his only reason for coming to Taipei is to see me and hang out with me, and manages to convey this to me without an ounce of emotion or excitement. I don¡¦t feel  exactly encouraged by the way he says this, but I take it with a grain of salt as thats the way he's always been and the way that I've known him. Some say that the Dike was born without facial expression or emotion, and if you don¡¦t know him well, you might just believe that. The Dike has been a good reliable friend of mine, and I was glad to see a familiar face here, and was looking forward of accepting the daunting, near-impossible task of showing the Dike a good time and inducing his first facial expression (good or bad) in the past few years.

 I asked the Dike to call me when he landed so I could get a heads up and meet him  in the city(which is 1 hr away). Since I was working, and my roomate had just quit and was currently unemployed, I asked my roomate to stay home and meet up with the Dike when he called. Captain Dike makes his way to the city on his own, and calls me at 4pm and tells me he's already in town. Meanwhile, my roomate was waiting all morning for the Dike to call, and almost ended up missing his afternoon appointment waiting for the Dike. Strike 1 for the Dike. We ended up meeting the Dike in the City after I got off work, and the Dike got settled into my place and we ate some Hot pot for dinner.

Our first night comprised of taking the Dike going to a local hole in the wall bar/pub, one of the few times in his life experience that he¡¦s been to such a place. After literally putting a gun to the Dikes head to get him to finish the first cocktail that I bought for him, the Dike appeared to begin having a good time. However, this could not be certain, as any confirmation of a facial expression was still not made. The Dike then suddenly found his way in between 3 women, of which I helped introduce through friends, and was entertaining them by chatting up a storm. One woman, was particularly attentive, giving him an occasional arm rub, wink, and managed to put her head on the Dikes shoulder for a photo I took. Lets call this special woman the ¡§partner¡¨. Towards the latter part of the evening the Dike was on the dance floor (note how I don¡¦t say he was dancing on the dance floor, because I can¡¦t technically call that dancing), impressing the ¡§partner¡¨ and her friend with his robotic hand gestures and head movements and gruesome hip twisting. All of this was done to a rhythm that was not at all synchronous to the beat of the music, but rather random and unpredictable. Some might call this ¡§movement¡¨ unique, or perhaps unusual, but I prefer to call it ¡§erkel-esque¡¨. The partner ran off after a few songs for some reason (perhaps in fear that she couldn¡¦t match the Dikes dance skillz), so I persuaded the Dike to go after her. The Dike went after his partner, and they ended up chatting the rest of the evening. At one point, the partner asked for the Dikes email address, and his response was simply ¡§OK, here it is, good night¡¨. To my knowledge that is the closest the Dike has ever been to picking up a girl at a bar, so I was happy for him. However, me and my roommate were bugging him the whole cab ride home ¡V she asked for his email, and didn¡¦t have the guts to get her number. What a riot! Anyways, I guess it¡¦s better then the usual scenario of him staring into a blank space when he goes to a bar.

I¡¦ll continue the story later, I¡¦m at work right now and I should be writing patents and not gossip. I will say that in part 2, the Dike and his partner get together for an evening rendezvous. Peaceeeee!!!!!!!

Alright, so some people actually read this site, but truth be told that I've run out of interesting things to say about my stay in Taiwan. Lots of cars, bad traffic, bad air, cheap chinese food, street vendors. Oh ya, and everything is in Chinese, for those who might not have guessed. Work is work, and when is work not work? But at least my work is flexible and I can come and go as I please as long as my stuff gets done and I don't miss any meetings. Aside from that, I spend my free time chilling, excercising, some kickboxing, jiu-jitsu, watching taiwanese talk shows, swimming, and learning chinese once in awhile. Same ol Same ol.

Ya it's about time I add something.

Alot has happened since I last wrote.....Honesetly I'm really lazy to update this, but I will for the sake of the 3 people who *MIGHT* happen to stumble across this little page. In order to speed up the summary of last month, I've categorized the main stuff that's happened.

Work:  Just finished my first month of Work. First week was a laugh, but afterwards started learning about patent law and such, and now I've begun drafting a few patents and doing claim procedures. You know , no matter what you do...things get a little slow and mundane at times. My company has been really good to me, but sometimes things are a little slow and boring, sometimes they are interesting and fun. Don't know what else to say.

Jiu-Jitsu: Finished my first will month with the Taiwan BJJ club (www.taiwanbjj.org) where things are going pretty good. I've managed to submit every White belt I've come across in the club, and a few blues too. Andy (head instructor) isn't there at the moment because he's training with some Top Guns of the UFC in LA (Frank Trigg and Randy Couture among others). I can't wait till he gets here and kicks my ass...it will be an honor. I'm thinking about Going to Thailand at the end of the year for a grappling tournament... but so far we've only done Gi BJJ, and I'm a bit more interested in No Gi Grappling. We'll see what happens...so far the guys have been great, and I've been getting some great workouts and instruction.

Chinese: Gets better every day, but not fast enough. I can speak and read well enough to order food from stalls and restaurants (well most things) and can communicate basic things that tourists use. Beyond that however, is a different story. I want to be able to joke around with colleagues and use that Witty banter I'm so known for.... well...maybe not. A few more years here should do the trick.

Food:  I reached my all time low in weight a few weeks back at 165 lbs...but now I'm back up to 170. I guess I'm used to the food here....but I miss things like: Garden Salad, Ceasar Salad, Green Salad, Organic Green Salad..you get the point. TW is not the cheapest place to eat healthy. Most food here is either loaded with Carbs, Fat, MSG or all. Arghhh...... Where is the all you can eat salad bar when you need it! I miss Greek food.

Friends: I've made a few friends here. Alot of times I just hang out with my roomate Stan, who I knew from Back in Van. I live near a guy I met Called Jason, and his Bro Jack. They've been living here for 7 years and they have been really cool and nice to me. Alot of times we go out and eat....go to clubs and such...helps me out with more than I can mention right now. Aside from them...there are a few other people...and people I meet through language exhchange in pursuit of my Chinese lanuage endeavors.

OK, that should tie up your appetites for now. This weekend I'm going to Hualien for a surfing trip....maybe I'll filll you in on the details after. Peace out!!!

EDIT: Scott managed to point out the BJJ section mentioned above regarding submitting white belts, which has long escaped my memory until he told me about it today out of nowhere. For clarification, I still maintain the above statement as true at the time of writing, however being summer with alot of absentees, people not present, only having time to grapple 1-2 people at the end of a class, and most of all,  only having gone to 3 classes at the time of writing, I couldn't have grappled with the entire club within my first while.  Thus the term "every white belt I've come across" instead of "everyone" was used. Of course, as I started going more often, and starting grappling more people when they started to show up again, that statement did not remain true anymore.  Wow, who'd of thought he took offence to that...or is he just trying to bust my ass....... ;)