Fruit Tasting, package wasting, and job chasing

This week we were back in hsinchu, and we were working like dogs to find jobs. The school term started on the 1 September, so unfortunately most full-time positions were already filled in late August. We went door to door to tons of schools in hsinchu and jhubei (across the river from hsinchu) and have had a little bit of luck.

Teaching job interviews here normally involve a 30 min demonstation of your teaching skills. Tim went for a demo at kid castle (see pic) on Monday and worked there on Tue, and Wed. The job is nice but its not many hours – 10am to 11:40am, mon to thurs, so he would need to find another afternoon job. He is going for some interviews on Monday.

I got offered a full time afternoon job at a Giraffe Language school in hsinchu, which is a nice school. I am the only foreign teacher and there are 4 chinese-english teachers, and I taught there yesterday.

An interesting chair at the train station.

Taiwan is very good at recycling, with recycling. Check out the recycling area at Robyns building below. Although its a bit ironic, because Taiwan often overdoes the packaging. The below "Five cereals bumper harvest biscuits" (catchy name) contains three different layers of packaging before you get to the biskies. mmmm... biskie my biskie!

Its the little things...

A few good inventions that I have noticed in Taiwan are:

- Light switches with a little light on them (so that you know where the switch is in the dark).

- Magnetic bath plugs, with a place to stick it in the middle (So that its not always falling all over the place, and makes it more symmetrical).

But its not all good, there are some silly things that are not in use here. Like "Stop streets" There are no stop streets. Its either a Robot, or an ambigious 4 way intersection, where you slow down a bit, but the more main road has right of way? I'm sure it speeds up traffic flow, but increases accidents as well.

Tim used his shifty eyes to check how Ryno was doing on the "Impossible quiz".

We have been trying out a few new fruit lately. The above fruit is aptly called a Dragon Fruit (it looks like the pink flames of an ancient beast, and it was pretty delicious. It tastes like a kiwi, but a softer and more watery taste.

Fill 'er up cliff! Getting drinking water is like a mini petrol staion here.

The drinking water is not that great here, but apparently you can drink it if you want from the north of the island upwards. In order to evolve my body to get used to the water, I started drinking half tap water mixed with half purchased water. But I started getting this strange dry cough (only at nights) so I halted the evolution process.

This fruit may be called a pamelo? It was citrus fruit, that tastes like a bland, less zingy grape fruit.

We built this Gotham city on rock and roll! (Don't worry, I said Gotham)

We bought a Scooter!

Actually we bought two!

But we got a good deal on both of them. We haven't got them quite yet. We will be getting one later today, and the other one tomorrow. Part of the reason, we got a great deal on them is because they are slightly illegal. They are not stolen or anything, but rather just lacking a bit of paperwork. The previous owners were foreigners who just left, and didn't bother going to the traffic office to change the details into the new owners name, and so now there is either no paperwork or expired paperwork... but don't worry, this happens all the time and many bikes either have expired paperwork or are licensed in their friends names. The biggest problem arises if it is parked illegally and towed away, then you cannot claim it back because you have no paperwork!

Unfortunately it's not this pimped up one in the picture. Tim just saw this sweet baby parked on the road while he was walking.

Check next weeks blog when we reveal photos and awesome names for our beasts of transportation! Cheerio