I just want to post "bleh" since I have a really large migraine right now.
I have been phoning back and forth to the legalisation office (Foreign Commonwealth Office) to get small details that I am filling in to get 2 documents legalised. It will cost me £60 for both of these documents to be legalised. The cost of sending the documents I am not sure of yet. But the headache begins here. I need to then get the FCO to send the documents after they have been legalised and stamped to the Taipei Representative Office. I haven't done much posting before, so I am not exactly sure how to do all this perfectly without screwing anything up. I think I am doing things right, but there is always that feeling you are sending of documents which you'll never receive back, because somewhere in the process you screwed up.
Just obtaining the address in English, where I live was a pain in the butt, but I believe I managed to get the correct address. If not, the address will also be in Chinese. Anyway's after the FCO send the documents (Once they are legalised) to the Taipei Representative Office in the U.K, they need to stamp it. – They charge a fee, so within the envelope I send to the FCO, I will need to attach a few postal orders or bankers drafts to pay for the document to be firstly sent from the FCO legalisation office in Kent to London to the Taipei Representative Office. (I already paid the £60 online through the government website the FCO has, but that is just for the stamping and verification of said documents) Then I need to include a £28 payment in a postal order or bankers draft to the Taipei Representative Office in the U.K. to pay for their legalisation/verification of the documents. It costs £10 for each document at the TRO but then an £8 fee is charged to send the documents back to my Taiwan address where I am currently living.
As you can see, it is a little complicated. But that isn't the fact why I am getting a little pissed off. I am just scared I am sending these important documents off and they can easily get lost in the post and I can possibly never see them again. Then what the hell am I going to do? I won't be able to become a Taiwanese citizen which is what I want.
The other thing that I don't know about yet is when I will be conscripted for the army. Is it straight after I become a citizen or what? I was hoping they give a few months of freedom when just becoming a Taiwanese citizen and hoping they don't immediately draft you into the army. I am on a language course at a university called Feng-Chia and I want to do level 1 Chinese so I can at least understand and possibly communicate with others in the army. I also want to join the Taiwanese Marines, which I will probably need to know how to speak Chinese. But I really just want to join the Taiwanese Marines for the exercise and change in mentality. I want to do something hard and challenging if that makes sense and I want to be a hard worker.
I heard the Taiwanese military is especially easy for foreigners since the military drill instructors can't tell you to do much since they can't speak much English. Which causes a problem and they will leave you to do easy jobs. (Just what I have heard) – Which is not what I want to do. I want to do this military training for its purpose of making shrimps into hardcore motherf"&2kers. I feel I am too soft, which is a good thing, but it can also be a bad thing. I just want to bulk up and be honest with myself and I feel this can help me get through a lot of trouble. I want this to be a real challenge for me. But perhaps I won't be accepted into the Marines, which is OKAY, I think if I try hard enough in the army I can still bulk up, but I feel it will be too easy for me. I don't mind the waking up, being shouted at and the exercise which I do anyway's till I drop dead most of the time.
I am the fittest I have ever been in my life and I also putting on a lot of muscle at the gym. I think in 2 months time I will be more than ready to join the army. But the problem is not fitness, the actual problem is the language barrier. Perhaps in 2 months time I will be able to understand and perhaps speak basic Mandarin. But I really want an extra 3 months at Chinese, at level 1 Chinese at Feng-Chia University. I have been studying basic level 0 Mandarin, so I can read some characters and write quite a few, but I still suck at Chinese.
I think if they gave me the opportunity to study one more month, I could perform much better in the military and this would help them, since I think I would be able to understand these instructors much better. – The fact I will be conscripted into the army for 12 months makes this a big thing in my life, so I need to be able to at least speak to others who might not know English. There really is that element of worry.
I am taking a deep dive into the friendship ring today by going out with a girl who saw my ad on a website called Tealit to do some language exchange and to hopefully make friends with her.
I have talked extensively over Facebook with her and I asked her if she would like to go grab a coffee. But I kind of made her choose the place and since she has a car she is picking me up. (I am very romantic :P) As you can tell.
I will bring my camera with me just to see where she takes me and hopefully it will be somewhere nice. The main purpose is for her to teach me a little Chinese and to test me for a test I have coming up on Monday. (I also have another language exchange person teaching me on Monday too) So hopefully I can learn this Chinese stuff fast. I already know bopomofo quite well. It was just the pronouncing of words and the 4 tones that I suffer with. So hopefully she can help me with that.
I am kind of scared or apprehensive as I have never done anything like this before, so I don’t know how it will go! I hope she likes my humour and I hope she can actually understand me. Hahaa! I talked to her on the phone and she kind of couldn’t understand me too well, but I think her level of English is quite good. My Chinese is poor — so it is good she can speak somewhat decent English and she types quite well too! 🙂
Just a random picture I took, when I went to this famous place called "Sun Moon Lake" in Taiwan!
So I am studying Chinese right now in Taiwan. (Mandarin) It is as if everyone is better than me. In fact they are better than me. I won’t kid myself. I thought I would be able to learn Chinese (Mandarin) really fast or at least pick it up easily. I can only really remember half of BoPoMoFo. I was kind of depressed in class today and wasn’t so excited in learning the language As at first I was quite motivated and excited about learning the language. Now it is just one of those ‘meh’ things which I don’t really have any motivation for anymore. I mean at least if someone else sucked badly like me, I wouldn’t be alone, but it seems everyone is decent for a beginner learning Chinese while I still suck.
I understand that people will say that no one is better than one other person, but in this case it is proven fact. It is as if I can’t remember or I don’t have to brain to learn this language. Basically what I am saying is that I am dense when it comes to learning this. Probably most other things as well. The funny thing is when doing computer science I excelled in front of everyone else. Here I am the last guy to complete tasks, the last guy to understand, the only guy who doesn’t understand, the nervous guy, the freak from my own perception or the dumb ass (Idiot).
Recently I posted a bit of text on Facebook saying “One day you will be able to download Chinese into your brain..”. I am afraid I probably won’t ever see that, but perhaps one day it will happen. It is just so frustrating how others can pick up what is said and remember them without any detriment to the pronunciation of the symbol.
I just wish I was smart enough just to learn something in my life that would be useful for my future. Maybe I will crack learning Chinese one day, but why am I the one that is so behind in the class. The teacher even said to me that I’m not stupid, as she saw that I was upset or in a bad way, but that is what you expect others to say when you are actually dumb. So that really didn’t help.
If there is one thing I’d ask to a greater power, it would be to give me money. If that wasn’t an option, then a brain would be pretty nice. Or a brain that could at least remember stuff as opposed to losing information as soon as it is said to me. I don’t know. I thought I was out of this depression, but from my stand point, bad things keep happening and I try… but it never works out.
Sad to say I had come across a situation where it was a decision as to whether to help defend someone or not. I don’t want to make this a big issue, but I still had this on my mind. What lengths and at what point am I willing to help someone who is being abused by another person.
So okay, here is how the situation played out:
I’m eating my breakfast in the park. A nice salad bowl and some macaroni with some nice sauce and small amounts of cheese.
Then I see a 2 guys, one who looks around his 70’s and who walks with a walking stick, who is sitting down. The two of them are arguing about something or the other, but I can’t speak Chinese that well nor understand too well. He looks around his 40’s, he is a young bloke in comparison to this other guy however.
Okay. So they are arguing, that’s fine, people argue and usually say sorry later to each other. But the younger guy was walking off and then they started shouting at each other. The younger guy walks back, picks up a bottle full of water and whacks this old man around the head. He hit this guy with this bottle really hard from the way it looked. This older guy fell off his seat, but quickly picked himself up. I can presume that the younger guy started cursing at him, as he was shouting after he did what he did.
Okay, so he only hit him around the head with a bottle. I felt very, very inclined to go do something about it. But the younger guy, kind of walked off and didn’t do anything more. The older guy looked fine and not to hurt by what had just happened.
It wasn’t just me watching, it was a groups around me and groups who were sitting across me who saw it all unfold. Like me they did nothing.
Where I would intervene…
I don’t have a clue what they were arguing about. But if the younger guy kept laying into the older guy, I would have done something. I probably would have hit the younger guy or done something to at least stop him. It looked to me that the younger guy and older guy had friends also sitting in the same area. The friends of the older guy did nothing, but that is probably a no-brainer as they looked the same age as this older guy if not older. But if this younger guy, kept hitting or kept assaulting this older dude, I would have probably laid into the younger guy and pointed him to the exit. I find it unacceptable to hit someone that old who can’t protecting himself. If you are going to hit someone for any reason, then let the terms be even and let that guy at least have a fighting chance. Although I do not like violence, sometimes you have to resort to violence when others choose that option, you do that instinctively when you a) have to defend yourself or b) have to defend others being attacked who have violence inflicted on them. I have this quote on my Facebook information page, which has a part, where you can state your favorite quotes, mine is:
“English philosopher Edmund Burke said, The only thing necessary for the triumph [of evil] is for good men to do nothing.”
Is for good men to do nothing… I feel sad that I kind of didn’t act. But I made sure I was close by afterwards, if the younger guy started up stuff again on the old guy. The younger guy just sat down very near to the old guy and they just didn’t speak to each other. I’m not sure if they were relatives or what, but whatever the case, I would have protected the old man, if the younger guy started assaulting him again. I would have done something. That says a lot as there were groups around witnessing what was going on as well and they just started in amazement.
If you are reading this, what would your reaction be? Keep in mind you are in a country, where you can’t understand what people are saying.
I often find that it is music which can cheer you up or just forget about everything that is going on. I guess gaming does this as well. I game quite a lot and gaming helps. It makes you forget, it makes you think about other things going on which really mean nothing in the world. But for those few hours, you feel different, you feel you aren’t in trouble anymore. There is no one on the planet but yourself that matters and you use that self-importance to help others which you’d like to do in real life. Anyone reading this probably won’t understand, but that’s fine, because I understand.
I loved this version of “I’m coming home”, but this was sung differently to what I’ve heard and is an nice acoustic piece. It kind of relates in someways to my situation. It doesn’t offer a solution out, but states that someone is coming home and it doesn’t really what happens, because that person is going to where he/she belongs. Maybe I need to have that feeling of being able to belong somewhere as opposed to having to stay somewhere just for the sake of things. I guess that is another thing I have learned and maybe I’ll feel like I belong one day and “Let the rain wash away all the pains of yesterday”.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uVrK8L4adg8
“Instead of sitting around, looking down onto tomorrow…”
