I have lived here for soon two months and Michael (my aikido teacher - we call them big Michael and small Michael, or da Michael and siao Michael in chinese) hasn't asked for any money yet. He says we'll start paying in september, and then only 12000/month for living, aikido and a scooter (12000 NT = 2500 SEK = 365 USD). Quite a good deal if you ask me.
Tonight I'm going out for Korean with my friend/ex-boss Ariel, it's gonna be fun. The best part is it's on the other side of town so I get to drive scooter.. which I kinda love. Especially on the larger streets and bridges. My body's still a bit scared from the crash, but my mind is slowly but steadily taking back my scooter-guts. I know I won't fall, but my body still panics a bit when I take sharp turns (like the one I did when I crashed).
Oh and my birthday was a lot of fun. Not much to say. The brunch was the best.
It's funny how you dumb down your own english when living here, since the Taiwanese don't exactly speak well and tend to ignore/forget about articles and stuff. "We're going to school to do that test" can easily be "we go to school for test". It's so easy to forget yourself and start speaking like them. Chinese as a language has a lot less grammar and articles so they aren't used to it. In fact the language is a bit stupid but at the same time simple. "Hau" means good. "Bo" means not/no/negative. "Ma" signifies a question. "Ne" means you. You can then just use these words to ask how someone is. "Ne hau ma" translates to "You good?". "Hau bo hau" translates to "Good not good" (as in, do you feel good or bad?). "De" signifies an adjective. "Bing" is ice. "Tcha" is tea. "Bing tcha" translates to ice tea. "Bing de tcha" translates to cold tea. Ice as an adjective is "cold" and so on. They only have one word for she/he - "san". They characters are written differently, but when you speak it sounds the same.. Hence taiwanese often mix up she/he when talking english. "Yao" means want. "Wo" means I. Hence "wo yao" means "I want". "Bo yao" means "Not want" etc. So far it's pretty much logically coherent, right?
Well, some things aren't. The character for siao (small) and the character for zhing (heart) should mean small heart, right? WRONG. Siaozhing means "Caution!" or "Warning!". But then we have the very logical composite words too. For example tien (heaven/sky) and qi (power/energi) becomes "weather". "Energy of the sky". Pretty smart, eh?
To be honest I like writing and reading chinese more because it's so beautiful and complex. But also a lot less useful for a foreigner. Might be I'll start taking real chinese classes. We'll see. Some more stuff I wrote on the whiteboard:
Same as above, only hand-written.
This is what I have been given for a chinese name. The first character is "ho", then "an" then "dau". The "ho" is my last name (Holmström) and Andau is of course Anders.
Ho-qi-dao. These are the three characters the japanese use for ai-ki-do. Harmony-ki-way respectively, or something like "the way of harmonizing the energy of life" In China/Taiwan they have the same meaning, but other names. Notice how the first Ho is the same as my last name, and the qi is the same as tienqi (weather). Bam.
Aikido proper/calligraphy.
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Oh and did I mention the tones? Mandarin has four tones (up, flat, down-up, down). You can pronounce every word in the four different tones and they will have completely different meaning. For example "4" and "die" is very close (tsU/TSu). I think. The tones are the hardest part so far.
Tada
PS. I have probably commited 50 mistakes with the characters, sounds and tones in this text. Real chinese speakers would laugh at me for sure. But still...
