SPCA Taiwan: I Am Adopting a Dog

A colleague, Sean McCormack, works for SPCA Taiwan, a nonprofit organization that take in dogs http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/taiwan/archives/2009/05/05/2003442831

I've listened to him talk about it before. A lot of the dogs have been abandoned and have suffered abuse at the hands of their owners. Some are mutilated and scarred. They are, I guess, pretty traumatized. The other day, I had lunch Sean and another friend, who was looking to adopt a second dog. I sat there listening, half in a daze, wondering why my Vietnamese noodles and spring rolls were taking so long. It didn't really occur to me that I could also adopt. I have been planning to get a dog, but my intention had always been to wait until my daughter was a little older. I envisioned explaining responsibility and then seeing if she was up to the task by giving her extra chores, like washing the dishes, doing laundry and basically cleaning the house from top-to-bottom. I imagined myself cracking open a cold beverage and resting wisely on the sofa in front of Saturday morning MLB and someone doing work - two things I never get tired of watching.

On Thursday, Sean asked me if I could take a beagle called Luna. Sean found her at a hut in a field on the way up to Wulai (烏來). The hut is a popular dump site for people in Taipei who have grown bored of their pets. He said the dog, an eight-month-old beagle, had a scar or stain around her neck. It seems the previous owner kept her leashed with a wire noose. I told him I'd have to get back to him, that I had to talk to the wife, etc. At the time, I figured this was a good-enough brush off. For the rest of the day, I just couldn't get the scar out of my mind. Plus, why wouldn't I want to adopt this dog? My daughter is crazy about dogs. I think I know dogs (I grew up with them.) We go to the park by my home every night it's not raining - a great place for walking a dog. More importantly, we can help this dog.

By the time my wife came home from work, I had come up with a whole resume for this beagle. It wasn't necessary. She was on board from the moment I brought up the topic.

Sean says he goes through a certain process before signing off on an adoption:

1.) He interviews potential adopters for suitability.
2.) He has a chip embedded in the dogs. I'm not so sure about this one. I think it has to do with controling dog populations.
3.) He has the dogs vaccinated.
4.) He house breaks the dogs.
5.) He has them fixed. I don't what Animal Taiwan's policy is here. I need to get more information.

Sean also provides a dog obedience, maintenance class if he decides a suitability exists and decides to get the ball rolling on the adoption. It is worth pointing out that he will take any dog back if things do not work out with an adoption.

Sean will probably bring Luna, the beagle, over in the next couple of weeks. There are some things to work out still.

Hotwheels '69 Corvette ZL-1 Taiwan

I just tonight noticed the above Hotwheels toy car in the Japanese convenience store called Family Mart (全家) by my home in Manka (艋舺), Taiwan. Naturally, I picked one up for my daughter. Besides the flashy packaging, it was completely the same as when I was a kid. The weight is the same. The smooth spin of the wheels is the same. Plus it's made of metal, not plastic. I remember Hotwheels toy cars used to be around a buck (this was 1977). In Taiwan in 2009, they're NT$69 (two bucks and change).

People have been asking when I'll put up another post. I'm so busy with school right now that I can't imagine putting aside an hour for this thing. Tonight I had a few beers, so my sense of urgency on the thesis front is gone. When I get back to blogging (early July), this is what I'll be up to:

a) Interesting people and items I met collecting my thesis research
b) The historic area of Monga (艋舺), Taiwan. I've been collecting info. People have also been sending it to me - thanks for that.
c) How I'm paying NT$1700 a month (US$55) for security guards that do nothing but smoke, drink tea and occasionally piss me off. I'm really going to go to town on these guys one of these days.

Back to the toy cars:

The top of the package reads 007. I was trying to figure it out - when did James Bond have a '69 Corvette? I don't think he ever did. What on earth would James Bond want with an American car? Then it hit me: the goofy silver thing behind the label must be a Corvette too. James Bond was driving it when he had to swerve off a winding road to avoid hitting Eva Green, who played Vesper Lynd (for my money the hottest Bond girl ever) in Casino Royale (for my money the best flick in the Bond franchise). Besides killing people instead of just karate chopping them, it seems the newest James Bond also drives a Chevy.

Taipei Has Public Bike Transport

I noticed Taipei has a public bike system up and running around Taipei 101. We swipe our Go-cards and can then take a bike (see above pic). I'm not sure about the time limit. We can return them to one of several posts in the vicinity (there's a map). The area seems better spaced than a lot of Taiwan's older districts, so it should be pretty easy / safe for non-experienced riders to give it a go.

I've often wondered about Taiwan's bike laws - is it legal to ride on the sidewalks? The bikes do not come with helmets, so be careful. The city is now enforcing helmet laws. I think it's NT$600 a pop.

Ga La King, Monga (艋舺) Taiwan

I took these pictures near Youth Park (青年公園) Sunday in Ga La, Taiwan. For those who are not familiar with Ga La, it's the neighborhood near the Hsin Tien River and Huazhong Bridge (華中橋) in Monga (艋舺). Every weekend the park fills families from all over Taipei. It probably has the best, and most, playgrounds in town. There's also a terrific circular sandpit. A market activity has sprung up around the kids, with vendors selling plastic shovels and buckets, balls, Frisbees, plastic baseball bats and all kinds of snacks. Every now and then, a cop will slowly wind through the park on a scooter to scatter the sellers, but they're back in an instant.

The shots above are of a traditional sausage stand on the sidewalk right outside the park. The pinball machines were antique, with nail grooves and steel ball bearings. For NT$5, diners can try to win something. We played three times, accumulating points that went toward a discount on NT$10 sausages. The boy next to my wife was so engrossed that he didn't notice the vendor had given him a broken sausage. Half the meat had fallen off. She rammed it back on the stick when nobody was looking.

BTW, I found out from a taxi driver that I live in Ga La King (Taiwanese language), not Manka. Manka is over by Lungshan Temple while Ga La King accounts for the neighborhood around Youth Park. According to the taxi driver, it was named for a benevolent gangster, who had many wives and who liked to eat clams, or ga la. When the gangster died, people in Ga La King put on black T-shirts and took part in a funeral procession through the neighborhood. When I told my wife, however, she wasn't going for it. She said it's simply Ga La. That's what they call now, and way back when her grandma was a girl.
I wrote about how teenagers had taken over the playgrounds of my previous neighborhood, Wenshan, Taiwan. We've moved, but there seems to be a trend. This guy must weigh 75 kilos, but he still wants to ride a plastic seahorse on a metal coil in Youth Park (青年公園). The instructions clearly read "maximum weight 30 kilograms". So I asked him what the appeal was - if people could see him now, they'd definitely think he was a wanker. He told me "no, it's a lot of fun". My two-year-old daughter seemed to agree. She immediately ran over to the adjacent seahorse and had a bit of a competition, to see who could get theirs going "back-forth" faster.

Try Minding Your Own Business

For some reason, this man was running the exhaust off his scooter down at Ma Chang Ting (馬場町) in Manka (艋舺), Taiwan this morning when I was taking off for my bike ride. I understand that I'm going to be labeled as a fusspot or gwei-mao (龜毛) by some for not minding my own business. Others will say as a "foreigner" I have no say in Taiwan's environment or anything other problem for that matter, but I'm going to post this anyway. I went over and asked the guy what he was hoping to achieve by polluting our country, to which I received a snappish "Gan ma? (幹嘛)?" or "What the f&^%?"

I'll be the first to admit I don't get mechanics. To me, running off your motor as a means of remedy when it has some serious exhaust problems does not fix it. Instead, it simply pollutes the neighborhood and makes everyone uncomfortable, "foreigners" and locals alike. The simple solution is to get the scooter fixed.

English Teachers in Taiwan

I get letters from people who want me to promote Taiwan or, more specifically, their Web sites, to prospective English teachers. I don't really know how to respond other than to say Taiwan really doesn't look like a good proposition. Here are the facts as I know them:

1. Taiwan has one of the lowest birthrates in the world. There aren't enough kids to go around.

2. The market is over-saturated. There's a struggling English cram school on every block.

3. Taiwan has some pretty tough visa policies. An English teacher will be asked to undergo a physical annually in order to obtain a work visa. This work visa is quite restrictive. You'll become more or less an indentured servant to whatever school signs for you. They will hold the work visa over your head, constantly threatening to revoke it if you do not agree to work split shifts (early mornings and evenings, plus Saturdays). To add injury to insult, you'll probably be asked to pay for the work visa and even the physical, which includes a blood test and X-ray, out of your own pocket. If you ever want to break free, and embark on the process of getting permanent residence, you'll undoubtedly find the process maddening. You'll be subjected to all kinds of strange behavior and, basically, the whims of the bureaucrat processing it. You should also keep in mind that the total of Westerners that have ever obtained citizenship is less than a hundred.  

4. Taiwan has a new tax law for "foreigners", namely, they must surrender 20 percent of their income (a very high tax bracket for Taiwan) for the first six months of every year. Considering they will only earn somewhere around US$30,000, this would probably be pretty tough to bear. They should keep these points in mind: Locals in the same financial situation will only be asked to fork over six to 13 percent. Also, this seems to be a violation of Taiwan's constitution, which states in Chapter I, General Provisions, Article 5: "There shall be equality among the various racial groups in the Republic of China (Taiwan)."

Today, I received a letter from a recruiter asking me to put my blog (they must be desperate) behind his efforts. In all sincerity, I am the last guy he should ask. First, I haven't worked in the cram school racket for some time, so any positive comments by me on the matter would be disingenuous. Second, I have my visa through my Taiwanese wife, which is sort of like a Taiwan green card. Therefore, I'm more or less exempt from the visa BS anyone else coming from overseas would surely encounter.

Please note that the mandate of this blog is personal amusement, meaning a bit of history, day-to-day anecdotes and whatever else pops into my mind. Recruiters stay away. I am not interested in "sharing the belief that living and working abroad is a unique and amazing opportunity to travel and see the rest of the world." I am not interested in being part of a "recruitment process [that] provides candidates with as much information about living abroad as we can". I am in Taiwan for the long haul. I love being here and I couldn't leave if I felt otherwise. I am not interested in people looking to get their rocks off on stints overseas while they find themselves. In fact, this kind of voyeurism disturbs me.

Multipurpose Playground

In my last post, I talked about 14-year-olds taking over the playground by my home. I'd never been to the park during the daytime as I have to work. On a day off, however, I took my daughter out for a stroll. As evident from the above the pictures, the local laundromat has also put the grounds to use.

That very same evening, we returned to the playground. This time, an old man was splayed across both slides smoking. We played around him for a while, until I asked him: "Why don't you get off the slides?" What gives with the Wenshan playgrounds? Really, I don't get it.