The experience of the long drawn out butt-kicking that is our last semester of grad school is kind of like accelerated reverse gastronomy. We’ll have to pass these courses before we can begin digesting their contents.

So instead of writing about interesting stuff we’re doing, we’re writing typing Word documents about interesting ideas we’re ‘reading.’ I’d like to say that between the ‘reading’ and the typing we’re reflecting deeply on said ideas, but the question “When?” has me crushed beneath its mountainously unassailable and 苦-ly relevant logic. I concede defeat. Gastronomical reversal it is.

Anyway, all that to apologize for the lack of action around here the last little while and for pulling ‘filler’ posts from the saved drafts (see below).

13 seconds well worth it! Turn your sound way up, and pay real close attention.

 

Pronounced: xu? hu?
Literally: snow flower/blossom
Means: snowflake

We got some photos from home of their first SNOW. It just so happened that I took some photos here on those same days. You could say there’s a slight contrast. Click here for the gallery. And here’s one from each from here and there. Click the pictures for a bigger view.

A breakfast cart on the way to work around 8:50am beside a tree that somehow doesn’t seem to mind the asphalt too much. I’m glad they appreciate trees and green stuff here, at least in our neighbourhood. This tree shades these ladies from the November sun. I thought it was interesting the way the roots come up through the road. I suppose there’s a metaphor in there somewhere.

The night before a snowstorm closed roads in greater Vancouver and canceled school. Aaaahhhh…

More pictures from Here & There.

Recently my friend Kelly has taken to posting the occasional poem on her blog. I won’t claim that this post was inspired by her poetic posts, especially since she is quoting serious, grown-up kind of poets like Shelley and John Howard Payne.

For me, however, children’s poet Jack Prelutsky’s epic poem will serve to convey my current (somewhat childish) attitude and frame of mind.

Homework! Oh, Homework!*

Homework! Oh, homework!
I hate you! You stink!
I wish I could wash you
away in the sink.
If only a bomb
would explode you to bits.
Homework! Oh, homework!
You’re giving me fits.

I’d rather take baths
with a man-eating shark,
or wrestle a lion
alone in the dark,
eat spinach and liver,
pet ten porcupines,
than tackle the homework
my teacher assigns.

Homework! Oh, homework!
You’re last on my list.
I simply can’t see
why you even exist.
If you just disappeared
it would tickle me pink.
Homework! Oh, homework!
I hate you! You stink!

* With regards to my third grade teacher, who forced us to memorize this poem, in what I now consider to be a somewhat ironic choice of a homework assignment. I am however, thankful, because almost twenty years later, the thought of taking a bath with a man-eating shark is cracking me up and helping me stay (a little bit) more sane.

Sometimes, when all I’ve been able to do is homework and bellyache about doing homework, a brief indulgence in childishness can be a nice break! :D

When we moved to Taiwan, I imagined that we probably wouldn’t get to enjoy too many of our North American holiday traditions or special holiday foods, unless I somehow managed to put together a little holiday meal for Joel and I to share. I was wrong…we did get to have a big Thanksgiving meal, and it was a whole lot more fun than having one for just the two of us would have been!

About a month ago, we started talking about the possibility of the school hosting a Thanksgiving dinner for our students and their families. Initially we thought we might have about 30-40 guests…it was really hard to tell how much appeal this Western holiday and all of the weird Western food might have. So we set a date (Saturday the 18th…to allow more people to come than the traditional Thursday date), started working on inviting our students, planning a menu, and figuring out the decor. I had a few worries about the menu….would we be able to find all of the necessary ingredients? And…where would we ever find an oven big enough to cook a whole turkey?!?!? Kitchens here don’t generally come with ovens. You can buy an oven, but most of them are about the size of a microwave…big enough to fit one 9×13 pan, maybe. Some are no more than a glorified toaster oven!

We decided to see if there might be any local places with pre-cooked turkeys available, to cut down on the work and to solve the problem of the small ovens. That was a relief! Usually my mom or my sister-in-law does the turkey…I’ve helped with it once, but that’s never been my department. :D The rest of the menu would be mashed potatoes, gravy, stuffing, squash casserole, green bean casserole, homemade cranberry sauce, deviled eggs, some side veggies, bread,and also some little stuff like olives and pickles. Dessert would be (of course) pumpkin pie, apple pie, and some kind of fruit crisp (it ended up as blueberry)…with whipped cream for topping.

Shortly after we sent out the invitations to our students, it became obvious that we were going to have more than thirty people come to the party. In the first few days we thought we might have 50. A few days later, we estimated 60-70. Finally, the week of the party, our count was up to about 80 people! We located all of the necessary ingredients, placed an order for our turkeys (we ordered 4…considering their smaller size, and the number of people) and some roasted ham to go along with it. To get all of the food ready on time, we had to start cooking and preparing on Tuesday…four days before the big party!

In introducing the Thanksgiving holiday to our students, we decided to leave out all of the stuff about the pilgrims and Squanto…and focus on the “Giving Thanks” aspect of the holiday instead. We did keep the fall/harvest/turkey theme going though…we got the kids to color pictures of turkeys (alive and cooked), pumpkins, acorns with leaves, and cornucopias. My littlest kids also made the ever-present “hand turkeys” where you use your handprint for the turkey’s body and feathers…and Happy Thanksgiving signs. We utilized Joel’s height to hang leaves (with fishing line) from the ceilings. My favorite decoration though, were our “Thanksgiving Trees.” We had three rooms for our guests to eat in…and in each room, we had a brown paper tree trunk on the wall. We also had lots of colored leaves for them to write down things they were thankful for, and decorate the paper trees. These turned out to be really beautiful…some of the leaves are really touching, and some are just plain hilarious. My favorite funny one says: “Thank monster, save our earth!” :D

It seemed to be a really successful night. There were people everywhere…laughing, talking, writing on leaves. Or asking questions about some of the holiday traditions, or foods. Some people liked a lot of the food….some people liked hardly anything. Almost nobody liked the olives, a fact which Joel particularly seemed to delight in. He kept luring the kids over to the olive dish, and saying “Hey! Try this!”…just so he could watch their disgusted faces. :D

One comment I heard several times throughout the night was, “Oh! This is so special!
I never thought I would get to experience this American holiday, or try these Thanksgiving foods.” One mom said, “I’ve seen this in the movies, but now I can try it!” So, overall, I think that (regardless of whether they liked the food) most people really enjoyed the experience a lot.

We had PLENTY of food. I had planned for 80 American people (with Thanksgiving Day appetites)…not thinking about the fact that the food would be new, and that they would probably just try a little of everything…instead of loading up the plate with their favorites, as we tend to do! So we had enough to take leftovers for some of our other friends to try on Sunday. And, we had enough leftovers that we’re still eating some of them at our house (yum). In fact, I’ve got one piece of apple pie that I’ve been saving to eat after I finish writing this post.

On Monday, our boss told us that the official count for the evening(including teachers and staff) was 95 people! Wow! It’s no wonder we were all so tired out afterward!!! But it was well worth it…the kids are still talking about it…and we feel like it was an experience that they will remember for a long, long time. Click here to see more photos!

Imagine for a minute what it would be like if your university prof, sports coach, or Sunday school teacher taught like a Zen master. From The World’s Religions (1991), by Huston Smith (emphasis mine):

…it has its own texts… but one glance at these distinctive texts will reveal how unlike other scriptures they are. Almost entirely they are given to pressing home the fact that Zen cannot be equated with any verbal formula whatsoever. Account after account will depict disciples interrogating their masters about Zen, only to received a roared “Ho!” for answer. For the master sees that through such questions, seekers are trying to fill the lack in their lives with words and concepts instead of realizations. Indeed, students will be lucky if they get off with verbal rebuffs. Often a rain of blows will be the retort as the master, utterly uninterested in his disciples’ physical comfort, resorts to the most forceful way he can think of to pry the questioner out of his mental rut… Zen masters may order their disciples to rip their scriptures to shreds and avoid words like Buddha or nirvana as if they were smut. They intend no disrespect. What they are doing is straining by every means they can think of to blast their novices out of solutions that are only verbal… Zen is not interested in theories about enlightenment; it wants the real thing. So it shouts, and buffets, and reprimands… [to] force the student to crash the word-barrier. Minds must be sprung from their verbal bonds into a new mode of apprehending.

Zen masters are determined that their students attain the experience itself, not allow talk to take its place (131-132).

I wonder how often our profs wished they could just haul off and smack us on the head with a meter stick. Probably best not to ask.

But regarding the bolded parts… I think all us grad students ought to be banished to monasteries to meditate on those bolded parts before we’re allowed to open our mouths (or blogs), but I’m in a good mood and this is supposed to be a happy place. :D As a wiser man than me pointed out, I don’t want to end up like those two old guys on the Muppets. Still, I think there’s a point or three to be made here.

In this six-and-a-half minute short, Su-fei, an unhappily unmarried single Jewish girl, interviews young and old in Beijing about getting boyfriends and spouses. At the 3:10 mark she talks to an old couple about their arranged marriage, the feelings they had, and what they first talked about.

Did you notice that more than one person mentioned “fate” (just after 2:10)? I think there might be an underlying cultural deal going on there. Also, at the end when she finally gets a guy’s phone number, notice how he hands it to her: business cards should always be given and received two-handed.
 

After a delicious lunch of famous Taiwan noodle soup, thousand-year-old egg, and stomach strips, we had a good time at the Museum of World Religions in Yonghe, Taipei, Taiwan. There was a class of elementary age kids visiting from Nantou who had never seen foreigners before (according to one of their teachers). I wondered why we were being followed and stared at as if we were one of the museum’s exhibits! We had a fun time talking with them, taking pictures, and of course, letting them measure how tall their were compared to me, how big their feet were and the obligatory “sure, rub my arm hair all you want! Yeah wow. Look at that!” It was fun.

The Museum
The MWR is all about atmosphere. The elevator on the way up dims the lights, plays a moody welcome message, and opens to a display about purification beside a transparent waterfall. This leads to the entrance hallway called “Pilgrim’s Way,” where esoteric questions (in several languages) are played over a background of ambient music and the walls light up with the same questions in Mandarin and English beside life-size pictures of people praying. The hall ends at a heat-sensitive wall on which you can leave your hand prints. All this is probably the least-impressive part of the museum experience, but it sets the mood.

The museum is designed to make a strong impression and send a message, rather than primarily convey large amounts of cognitive information (though there is a lot of info to be had). It’s an engaging multi-sensory experience; it’s easy to get “lost” among the displays. In addition to the main hall profiling ten major world belief systems and traditional Taiwanese religion, there is: a small movie theatre showing “Creations,” an artsy story-telling of various creation myths; a globe-style theatre that attempts to help visitors “grasp the spirit” of the Avatamsaka sutra (“one is all; all is one”) through an audio-visual experience; a tatami-style “meditation gallery” with a giant video screen on each wall and banks of meditation instructions for various religions; a “Hall of Life’s Journey” show casing religious paraphernalia associated with birth, coming of age, marriage, old age, death, and afterlife; detailed replicas of famous religious architecture with movable internal cameras; and more. In the main hall, each world religion has a wall with text, a floor to ceiling video screen, a large, tall display case set in wall with audio selections corresponding to various numbered and encased religious paraphernalia, and a touch-screen computer database.

Critique
The museum was founded by a Buddhist master for the purpose of promoting peace, tolerance, inter-religious dialogue, and for providing a “department store of religions” where people can learn about and choose a religion. On the whole it’s really well done. It didn’t seem to be overly pushy with the Buddhism, though there is a pervasive message of Buddhist inclusivism, or maybe pluralism. Judging from the Christianity displays, they’ve done a lot of homework, but I don’t think someone would have a balanced or basic understanding of Christianity if all they knew was what the MWR told them. It seems to go out of its way to emphasize the similarities and inconsequential differences of each religion at the expense of fundamental, mutually incompatible differences. For example, the Christian meditation instructions in the Meditation Gallery say, “As the aspirant progresses in the ascent to God, he/she experiences a breakthrough en route to a dazzling darkness beyond all desires and concepts” and uses the quote “My being is God” while referring to kenosis. In an Eastern, Buddhist/Daoist context, this will likely be understood to mean things that are actually more Buddhist than Christian.

I should also mention that St. Nicholas gets much better treatment at the museum than he does on their English website.

See our photos here.

A more in depth critical review can be found here.

Christmas is coming; we hereby officially claim the first Christmas-related post of 2006.

“Holy Santa, Batman!”
We’re visiting the Museum of World Religions tomorrow, a famous museum in Yonghe for the promotion of Buddhism pluralism mutual respect and acceptance among religions. Check out the website; it’s really flashy. The real action is on the Chinese version, but there’s still a big English site.

The museum’s website profiles the major world religions by mythology, ritual, pilgrimage, history, and figure. Personally, I think it’s too artificial to apply the same grid to every religion because it forces them all into an artificial shape that will be more or less appropriate depending on the religion. But it’ll be interesting to learn about Eastern religions from people that practice them, and hear their perspective of Christianity, the ‘Western’ religion.

Speaking of which, go here and select “Religions” (on the left) : “Christianity” (top right) : and “Mythology” (in the middle). Christian mythology – I was expecting maybe something on the Genesis creation accounts, the Exodus, or maybe the Incarnation, Resurrection, or Judgment Day. What do we get instead? Go see for yourself, or

I’m not questioning their intelligence, but I would like to ask, “What the heck kind of message is Western culture communicating???” And if you’re going to do historical research on Santa, there should at least be something about Saint Nicholas.

Chinese Firefox plugin
This is great – I just found it. When you mouseover any Chinese characters, like the ones in our sidebars, it instantly gives a translation. And there’s a bunch of other features I haven’t tried yet. All you have to do is go here and install the plugin. Then right click on a page and select “Toggle Chinesepera_kun.”

But you have to be using Firefox, which has been giving me a faster, ad-free internet for months now.