Hello all,

Well, I’m not really sure how to do this except to just do this, but I’m gonna officially end this blog. It doesn’t really serve a purpose anymore since my exchange has been over four months (omg, has it been that long?) and I’m in university now (which is drowning me in work).

The thing is, I still have so much I want to say about my exchange. The people who read this regularly all mostly have talked with me in person/internet about this on a personal level, so what should I keep this blog for? There are many unfinished posts. On average, a post took me 2 hours to write, because there was so much I wanted to say and I had to stop and think and articulate and write more. I don’t have that kind of time at all. Whereas before I could make time for it, I absolutely can’t now.
So what do I do with all my information? This blog had two goals. One was to inform my loved ones of stuff that was going on. Two was to try to give a picture of exchange life in Taiwan because there’s almost nothing on that subject online and lord knows a heads up would be nice to anyone headed in that direction in the future.

Maybe I will reorganize it later into what I think is useful to others and just useful to me/my close friends. The future is still a big pool of possibility. ^^

Anyways, this is goodbye. There are a few really good blogs on Taiwan that I have on my blogroll (that for some reason keeps disappearing).

Just to let you all know what I’m up to if you don’t already, as of right now I’m a first-year at Brown University. I think Brown deserves it’s own blog since it’s such an experience (and there’s not much out there on Brown either). I’m definitely doing social science, but I’m still shopping departments (before Taiwan I was really hell bent on Anthro and East Asian Studies, but post-Taiwan I have no idea except “social science”). I’m looking at Ethnic Studies, Anthro and EAS (still… but I’m trying to get away from this… part of my heart is still there though), Africana Studies, and American Civilization (not just about the US at all, interestingly enough). As for extra-currics, I do a lot of Chinese-related stuff (I’m in a club for Taiwan-China relations that does a LOT of amazing things, I organized a Chinese study group, and I have 3 appointments outside of class every week with 3 different TAs/tutors). I’m on the Taiko (Japanese drumming) team, and I tutor an amazing 9-yr-old refugee from Eritrea.

Anyways, we’ll see where all this goes. ^^ Take care. <3

Photo taken from here. (I’ve just discovered the hyperlink button.^^)

Hello all,

Well, of the many things I’d like to report about from my experiences in Taiwan, this anthropological conference is one of them. It was a two-day conference held in Academia Sinica, a research institute located in Taipei that conducts research on everything from biodiversity to political science. They’re Institute of Ethnology is the key point of my interest and will thus be the aspect of this institute that I focus on. Academia Sinica is far more than a research institute though and I highly recommend checking them out if you are at all interested in academic work in Taipei. (Although, most of the “good” stuff seems to be only in Chinese). It’s located at 128 Academia Road, Section 2, Nankang, Taipei 115, Taiwan.

If you’d like me to give you more specific directions (such as bus number and stop name) just let me know. From the main entrance you can get directions to any building, just ask the security people (they were very friendly with me). They don’t speak English as far as I could tell though.

So! The purpose of my visit to Academia Sinica was to attend the conference Anthropological Futures. This is not intended to be an all-inclusive review or something, just my thoughts on it. That being said, I’m gonna skip the lengthy description and just go ahead and tell you my overall impression:

-Unprofessional.

The man who organized this conference, Allen Chun, sat with his shoes off, feet propped up on the chair next to him, and leaned his upper body on the table as he slept. Another guy, Rob Wilson, purposely tried to show his disinterest by talking with others, laughing obnoxiously, interrupting the speakers (especially the only female speaker) often to insert what he believed to be quirky, warmly received, and antagonizing “jokes,” and reading his own book and loudly holding it in front of his eyes so that everyone could see that he wasn’t interested in the speaker.

The lowest moment came at the end, where instead of the initially planned closing comments section, Allen Chun decided to have an impromptu belly dancing performance by a woman who happened to be the wife of one of the presenters. Thankfully I missed this because I had left a little early to meet another friend for lunch, but my companion for the whole weekend, my good friend Reid from Michigan, stayed and reported to me via texting.

On the plus side, there was abundant food (Taiwanese style, of course. ) and they had vegetarian meals too (so Reid didn’t starve to death!). During the breaks there were cookies and little sandwiches and whatnot. My aunt once said something along the lines of “This is how you know this isn’t a real college (referring to a particular State Uni of NY in my town): they don’t have food at the events.” For me, as a high school graduate about to start her college experience this fall, I for one am delighted to know that they serve food at events. High education is a whole ‘nother realm and I’m happy of this. ^^

-Academic douchbags really suck.

There were two men, the aforementioned Rob Wilson and a Mr. David Blundell, who are douchebags of notable disgustion (I just made that word up because I don’t know the appropriate term for that). Both of these men have what I call chronic WGIAS: White Guy in Asia Syndrom. There’s something really really horrific that I’m sure every Asian country has: this transformation of losers/nobodies/dysfunctional people/etc into self-righteous, narcissistic, obnoxious, egoistic pigs. Of course, the characteristics of WGIAS-carriers as related to the probability of developing this syndrom differ from men and women. I will not go into any more length about this for right now though (perhaps in the future).

These two men were particularly wretch-inducing because their WGIAS was aided and further strengthened by their “achievements in academia,” by other placating wussie academics feeding into, entertaining, and/or silently, hushedly allowing such chronic WGIAS (behavior commonly found in the average white person), higher education-level vocabularies, and power-inducing discussion techniques that I’ve only seen academics wield.

-Some of the papers were incredibly and surprisingly interesting.

Here is the lineup of the two days:

—————————-DAY ONE

Brave New Worlds
-Paul Carter, Material Thinking Research and Design Studio and School of
Communication & Creative Arts, Deakin University,
“Dry Thinking and Human Futures”.
-Allen Chun, Institute of Ethnology, Academia Sinica,
“Toward a Postcolonial Critique of the State”.

Culture in Motion and Context
-Greg Urban, Anthropology Department, University of Pennsylvania,
“Supply and Demand: A Special Case of the Laws of Cultural Motion”.
-Huen Chi-wai, Divinity School, The Chinese University of Hong Kong,
“(Inter)disciplinarity as an A(nta)gonistic Field: The Possibility of an
Anthropology of the Academy”.

The Cosmopolis of Spectacle
-Michael Dutton, Department of Politics, Goldsmiths College, London,
“The Three Towers of Politics”.
-Ackbar Abbas, Department of Comparative Literature, University of
California at Irvine,
“Spatial Histories and Chinese Cities”.

DAY TWO

Iconomies of Media
-Leo Chen, Film Department, Kyoto University of Art and Design,
“‘What was the Nickel for?’?From the Economy of Images to the Iconomy of
Cinema”.
-Teri Silvio, Institute of Ethnology, Academia Sinica,
“Notes Toward an Anthropology of Animation”.

The Ethnographic Reality of Reality Ethnography
-David Blundell, International MA Program in Taiwan Studies, National
Chengchi University,
“Ethnography of Communication: Acquisition of Language and Knowledge”.
-Kerim Friedman, Department of Indigenous Culture, National Dong Hwa
University,
“The Ethnographer’s M.O.: A Case Study in Collaboration, Refusal, and
Form in the Making of an Ethnographic Film”.

Transcending States of Anesthesia
-Lindsay Waters, Harvard University Press,
“”Rebuilding Aesthetics from the Ground Up”.
-Rob Wilson, Literature Department, University of California at Santa Cruz,
“Towards an Ecopoetics of Oceania: Worlding the Asia-Pacific Region as
Space-Time Ecumene”.

—————————

The schedule ended up being different from this and for various reasons I did not attend all of the presentations. Of the ones I did attend, here are my thoughts:

1. Paul Carter and “Drying Thinking…”

To be honest, I kinda had a little crush on this guy. ^^ (Sorry to open with this kind of sentiment.) He’s tall, white, English (I’ve had a couple of “formative experiences” with English people here in Taiwan [particularly with an Oxford graduate] so this is kinda ironic; maybe more on this later), in his 40s, I think, has white/grayish hair (or maybe blond? I don’t remember), and dressed in a form-fitting purple or blueish dress shirt (so attractive! xD). He gave off this air of mild detachment/aloofment and quiet pondering and speaks really sensually. And his name is Paul Carter. Now that’s attractive! Here‘s his university profile page. And here‘s a video of him (that does his sexy self justice) on Youtube introducing the paper I heard to a different audience earlier this year.

—To be finished in later post. ^^

I’m home and it’s really weird. Hahah. I have much to say about this topic (as usual) but I’ll be writing in tidbits (as usual). Thanks for all of your support! What a year it was!!

Hope you’re all well! I’m still recovering. My second day of being home is over and I’m still not used to the time zone and am exhausted all the time, so I’m trying to get the energy to leave the house. Until then, I’ve been staying up all night and most of the day with my lovely older sister (<3!) watching anime and Jaejoong of DBSK’s new drama Sunao ni Narenakute. ^^ Very good, maybe you’ll get a review or something. hahah. (Don’t count on it).

Yo.

How are you guys? Good, I hope.

As the title suggests (?) I have 10 days left. Two of those are dedicated to Quentin (he leaves in 24 hours or so), one to my friend Jasmine from Canada (she leaves the day after Quentin) and then it’s my turn. I’ve already said goodbye to seven friends. After these next two, I’m finally done. I can relax a little more and focus on what I wanna do for myself (shopping and pictures mostly). This whole last month as been dedicated to the friends who have left. Very sad month indeed… The first week of the Leaving Season was a particularly difficult one. I literally cried every tear I had in my body. I haven’t really cried until two or days ago.
Today my German sister Nora left. I cried a lot today. >.> But let’s not get into details.

So! Some news:

-Me and Quentin are moving in together again in a couple hours (he’s still packing). It’s 1024 at night, I’m absolutely exhausted after crying so much after having a lack of sleep for one month. Oh well. Quentin and I have a million things to talk about so we’re gonna be up all night. Tonight’s his second to last night in TW. :\

Oh, and we’re moving to Taoyuan, this desolate city one hour outside of TP. ><* Don’t get me started on this. I wasn’t suppose to leave this house and the two conflicting excuses they’ve given me didn’t check out, but that’s rotary for you. >.> Moving on…

-Nora leaves in 30 min….. :_(((((

-Like I said, after these next 3 days, I’m the next one to go. I’m leaving behind 3 good friends and one okay friend, two Americans and two Canadians. Everyone else will already be home.

-Rotary told Miguel he was being forced to leave TW 5 hours before his plane took off. LONG fucking story. I hate Rotary with all my heart now.

-Miguel, Ju, and Manon are all loving it back home. Boyce isn’t and since she and I have a similar life background, I have a feeling I won’t either (although she’s at my stage a few years ago, I’m almost done with “The Game.”)

-I want to go home for obvious reasons: I can’t stand the essence of Taiwan, normality, my own culture, FOOD, my sister, I’m going to Florida, rest, start college. I don’t want to go home because: my exchange friends aren’t there, I finally accepted and fully realized that 97% of my friends suck, I don’t want to deal with family problems, I don’t have my fandom anymore (or whatever) so I essentially am going back to nearly nothing (a couple of good friends and that’s it) (although I’m kinda, in a good way anticipating a new start), I’ll miss my host mom and Taiwanese food, I’m gonna miss Jacky and Justin and Julie and Smilly (my classmates) and I’m saddened that our relationships did not get to the point I worked hard to get them to, now that I don’t belong in TW, I’m back to square one of finding somewhere to belong, etc.

-I went to an anthropology conference. It was… special. Good and bad. Details later.

-Chinese… what more can I say about it?

-I volunteered at an orphanage type place that’s a school for mentally handicapped children. Great experience.

-Uh… that’s all for now I guess… I’m still waiting for Quentin to hurry the hell up.

Have a good one!

My Ju is leaving me. This Sunday. It’s Friday. I can’t handle this… I think about this every hour of everyday. No lie.

You know, she got me a watermelon umbrella this week. She saw it with this guy on the street and went through great lengths to get it. She offered a lot of valuable stuff to this guy (actually, the whole story is really funny and Ju-licious). But I’m not gonna tell the whole story yet. You’ll hear about it back home. [UPDATE: I'm in the process of updating this story because it's super important to me]

And she’s leaving me in two days. Make time stop, please. Someone. Anyone.

Music: Aimai na mikau by Girugamesh

Hey there.
Actually, before I delve into some other topic, I have two things to say:

1. I’ve decided to just spend the money on having fun here. ^^ In one day, I already spent US50$, so I’m still working on trying to like… you know… conserve a little. It was a good day though! Hahha.I’ve spent over US75$ since I last wrote here a few days ago… o.O So I really need to tone it down…

With that money, I bought a cheap signing book for people (it’s really pretty! I love it!), I went clubbing (which means alcohol and entrance fee), food, special French food for Manon’s bday at Taipei 101 (not at the top though), and more alcohol for Manon’s bday party at school (I still have to get her present together…). So, it’s not going to waste. I just need to be a little more conscious. Haha.

2. On June 12th and 13th I’m going to this international anthropology conference with some friends called Anthropological Futures here in Taipei.

Actually, for the sake of the fact that I have less than 20 min to write, I’m gonna make this more tithe…
Highlights!

Monday: Gave a speech in front of the whole school thanking those who’ve helped me and telling the fuckers who were bitches to grow up and get a life. ^^

Tuesday: Got tipsy at school with some YEP for Manon’s bday, went to a nice park in a random area, Quentin gave me a present he’s been looking all over the heart of Taipei for and I lost it 3 hours later cause I left it on a bus… I was really depressed and cried and Miguel was sad that I was sad, so he left the rest of us, searched for FOUR HOURS BY HIMSELF in the center of Taipei looking for my present ( it was a watermelon umbrella that I invented in my imagination and always thought it’d be so cool if it existed. One day I mentioned this in passing to Quentin (a long time ago) and he fucking found something just like it on Tuesday! …. I really really love watermelon…). Quentin found it in a really random area and it belonged to someone else, he just asked for it. Miguel couldn’t find a replica of it (I tried the WHOLE YEAR to find a watermelon umbrella and turns out Quentin had been looking all year too to get me one and I was pretty sure that the one I lost was the only one in all of Taipei. Quentin was so happy he found this that when he gave it to me he said: “Now Josie, I looked far and wide for this. You better not lose it okay?” And what did I do? I lost it. T_T). So Miguel bought me a little watermelon pencil bag and came ONE HOUR to a place out side of Taipei to give it to me. Can you freaking believe this?!

What on earth did I do to deserve this? Holy crap… for the first time in my life, I was given more love than I could handle. I’m always the one who’s super intense in loving people and people are like weirded out or shy or whatever, but for the first time ever, I was on the receiving side. No WONDER Taiwanese didn’t receive me well… (actually, I have a little funny story about that).

Like, it stops you cold. When you’re given this much love, you don’t know what to do with yourself. You get stupid. I was speechless and could just cry and hug him. I was dazed for hours. It was like an out of body experience (not that I’ve ever had one of those…). Oh, actually, I have a little funny story about that too…

Anyways, gotta go.

Today, Wednesday, I’m going paragliding with some friends. Then, a few dinners and stuff cause on this Thursday, two YEP leave. Sunday Ju leaves. THEN, Manon just got told yesterday night, she has to leave Taiwan in exactly 7 days… Can you believe that? She has NO time to prepare and neither do we… God…. ugh. Rotary and their fucking “I-need-to-destroy-lives” superiority complex. I hate this Rotary District so much.

Anyways, I wanna end on a positive note. So: Love you all! June 1st was one of the hardest days of the exchange cause “it”‘s officially started… The Leaving Process.

Take care! You know I will, after all, how can you not when you have such amazing support in your life?

Well, I just realized that I’m an incredibly rich exchange student now.

I have more money in my hand right now that I’ve ever had in one year…

Thanks to the super-save mode I was in for a few months plus Rotary canceling our last trip and refunding us the money yesterday, I have about US$640 at my disposal, with another US$120 on the way next month as well as US$22 a week from my host fam until the end of my exchange AND the US$300 Rot’s gonna give us back from our emergency fund at the end of the year.
Let’s not forget the US$250 I saved for this summer.
Ladies and gentlemen, that’s over US$1000. For the next 5.5 weeks of my exchange. And I don’t know what to do with it. I’ve never had this much money in my life, so what to do?

Of course, I’m saving about US$550 for my trip to Florida this summer, but what about the other money?

One side of me says “SAVE IT! Who knows when you’ll have this much again!” and the other side says “SPEND EVERY FUCKING CENT. When are you ever gonna be in Taiwan again?!”
This is a big dilemma… and I don’t have anyone to talk to about it cause people here don’t understand what it’s like to be poor so they don’t understand the state of my mind right now. Never did I imagine I’d somehow end up with so much money so soon… Hm…

So, spend or save or some strange, unobtainable middle in between? If you have any advice, lay it on me (and quickly– God knows how long I can keep this shit in my hands and out of the apple store if you know what I mean….).

But I didn’t think about it till my lovely Brazilian wifey mentioned my blog just now. I was like “I have a blog?” Hahah, just kidding, but seriously I was like “Oh yeah… that thing.”

That’s kinda depressing. I had lots of high hopes for this blog. But hope alone doesn’t get you anywhere. I’m definitely gonna write once I get back home, but the problem is, I won’t remember the nitty gritty stuff. It won’t be fresh. And I haven’t journaled in like 2 months…

>.> This is really frustrating. Surely there has to be a balance between all this? The problem is, when I write, it usually takes me a good 2 hours to complete a whole post. Who has that kind of time? I certainly don’t. I tried breaking them up, but without the constant flow of thoughts, I can’t really say much.

Like now. I’m not really saying anything worth saying. Hahaha…. ^^’
Okay, well, anyways, blogs are interesting things. I write in here in my head all day long, but the actual action never really happens. Wouldn’t it be cool if I could record my thoughts? Wishful thinking…

Today is May 23rd. Elizabeth, the leader of the YEP, left today. I didn’t get to say goodbye to her either. I went to her party but she was over 2 hours late and I was really sick, so I just went home. It’s okay though, we weren’t that close.

Out of my friends, Ju is next (I think). No, wait, the 3rd of June is Mia and Linda. That’s really early… I like Mia but we’re not too close either. Linda’s sweet, but again distant. Mia is from NY (Syracuse, I’m def gonna be seeing here again on account of her being like 1.5 hours away from me) and Linda is from Germany.

Ju is on the 6th of June. God… I dread this day. Out of all the YEP, Ju is one of the ones I’m closest too. >.> Actually, I kinda don’t wanna talk to much in detail about it cause she reads my blog and I don’t want her to read all these mushy thoughts… they’re kinda private (read: embarrassing), lol! (“Josie! Then why are you writing them on a public place on the internet?” you say? Well, I like the internet. It’s okay if strangers and family and friends read stuff, but some stuff family and friends can’t really know about. That’s why I have two blogs…)

Anyways,  no one but some internet friends and some friends read this, so it’s okay. But still, if there’s a chance Ju will read this, then I don’t want to say it here. Cause I’ll look stupid. ^^ And nobody wants that.

Why did I bother to write all this nonsense? Dunno. Sometimes you just gotta say some stuff, even if that stuff is useless.

Sorry about this. Maybe next time will be more interesting….. (?)

I actually feel bad for the people who do read this, cause this is pretty bad quality blogging right here. But, one of the things I’m learning from being on this exchange (albeit struggling with) is the fact that somethings you just need to do for yourself. While, like everyone else, I want my blog read by lots of people and my thoughts heard and my point of view understand and whatever whatever, I also need to just say what I need to say, even if no one reads it.

I’m an avid blog reader, and there are a couple blogs I really admire, written by people with qualities I aspire to have (after all, isn’t life about chasing that ideal of what you wanna be? >.> That’s a topic for another time…). I think: Oh! Man, if only I could write like that! If only I could think like that/see things like that/reach people like that! Then I look at my blog and am like “Well.. I’m trying.”

But it’s not just about what you want. This blog serves a certain purpose for me. Regardless of what I want to write, what gets written here gets written according to what I need to write, you know? It’s one of those moments when you surrender to something greater than yourself as you know you (cause, after all, I believe there are many “selves.” The self I’m talking about it the self you see yourself as). It’s uncomfortable, especially when you’re used to controlling (or trying to control) everything around you. But, in the end, you just surrender and move on and accept anything that comes thereafter.

There’s always the future to do that stuff [the stuff you plan to do but have to put aside] in (actually, that’s not a very good way of viewing things because the future is promised to no one and it’s far better to live in the now, but for now it will suffice).

See you around. ^^ I got a couple of pictures to draw for two people’s bday tom.

Exactly two months left. (Two month periods tend to be patternistic on exchange. So this is a milestone).

I’m actually more ready to go home than 2 or so weeks ago. I’m ready for college and to go back to FL, not ready to face my NY life though. Whatever. It’s not that big a deal.

See you around