聖誕快樂!

In case you haven't already figured it out from the date of this post, the Chinese characters in the title above translate as "Merry Christmas" (Shèng​dàn​kuài​lè​). Here is my daughter showing off the goodies she received this morning:

This was the first "girly" Xmas for Amber in terms of the gifts she was given - her first Barbie doll ("Computer Engineer Barbie"); a Hello Kitty ハローキティ kitchen set, courtesy of Old St. Nick (last year he brought her a Hello Kitty bicycle); and a Pretty Fashion Shop featuring a doll named Mimi. The sharper-eyed among you, however, might notice a dinosaur and a toy train ("Salty" from Thomas & Friends, as a matter of fact) - proof that my little girl hasn't gone completely over to the pink side just yet.

This day has been a relatively quiet one for the family. After the ritual of opening the presents in the morning and talking with my parents over the phone, we had lunch in a Chinese-style teahouse, took a walk in the afternoon along one of the bicycle trails here in Fengyuan 豐原 and ended the day with a visit to my in-laws' home. Though white Christmases are pretty much out of the question in this country, it was good that the holiday (well, not in Taiwan) fell on a Sunday this year.

Here's hoping that you and your family also had a nice Christmas, wherever you are in this world.

Merry Christmas, メリークリスマス, 聖誕快樂 and Happy Holidays to you all!

Making the big time?

Amber shows off her Christmas drawing. As I write this, she has gone to bed, waiting for Santa to bring her some gifts. Momo, one of our two cats, shows typical feline indifference. 

There is one Taiwanese baseball player currently plying his trade in Japan who knows what he would like to get from Father Christmas this year - a nice, fat Major League Baseball contract. Jason Coskrey, a staff writer for the Japan Times ジャパンタイムズ, makes the call:

"With the majority of the baseball world caught up in the hoopla surrounding (Yū) Darvish's ダルビッシュ有 posting, and the record $51.7 million (¥4.04 billion/NT1.6 billion) fee the Texas Rangers doled out for his rights, there hasn't been too much attention paid to Hisashi Iwakuma 岩隈久志 and Chen Wei-yin 陳偉殷 this winter.

Both probably expected to be in MLB last season, but had to stay in Japan a little longer. Now the duo, who also both dealt with injuries in 2011, are ready to make the jump for real this time...

  

Chen is a bit of a mystery.

The Taiwanese lefty has been among the best pitchers in the Central League セントラル・リーグ since 2009, when he posted the lowest ERA (1.54) in the CL since 1968.

At 26 years old, he's still slightly unpolished, with his future potential a major selling point for some MLB observers.

'His ceiling looks lower than most thought just a few seasons ago, yet I'm hearing that 12 teams are interested,' said the MLB scout. 'His control is excellent, but his command is not. Strikes at the letters over the fat part of the plate are going to travel much farther in the big leagues.'

Chen is 36-30, with one save, a 2.59 ERA and 1.09 WHIP (walks plus hits per innings pitched) in five seasons with the Chūnichi Dragons 中日ドラゴンズ.

He's been helped to an extent by playing home games at pitcher-friendly Nagoya Dome ナゴヤドーム where, since 2008, he's 18-7 with a 1.97 ERA in 51 games versus 18-23, 2.84 in 64 outings everywhere else.

Chen made his first start of 2011 on May 6, after struggling with a left adductor injury in the spring. His performance suffered early in the season, but he regained most of his velocity and some command of his slider as the year progressed.

'Usually a team doesn't have to pay what Chen and his agent may be asking for to find out if a 26-year-old can improve his command and stay healthy,' the scout said.

'The fact that he already bridged the gap between Taiwan and Japan very well works in his favor; he is diligent and driven. He could be a great guy to have in the pen.'"

Only six players from Taiwan have ever appeared in a game at the Major League level, and the results have been mixed. Chen Chin-feng  陳金鋒 was the first, making his debut with the Los Angeles Dodgers in 2002. A once-highly regarded prospect, he never realized his full potential and returned to Taiwan for the 2006 season, where he's now currently an outfielder for the Lamigo Monkeys (Lamigo桃猿).

Tsao Chin-hui 曹錦輝 had some success pitching for the Colorado Rockies, but a series of arm injuries limited his playing time. He eventually came back to Taiwan, only to get involved in one of Taiwanese baseball's never-ending string of gambling scandals, and was booted from the game as a result.

As a Los Angeles Dodger, Kuo Hong-chih 郭泓志 became the first Taiwanese to appear in an All-Star Game, pitching in the 2010 contest. However, he suffered from an anxiety disorder during the 2011 season which saw him spending time on the disabled list, and he's currently a free agent.

Infielder Hu Chin-lung 胡金龍 showed some promise when he was named the MVP of the 2007 All-Star Futures Game while a member of the Dodgers organization. However, his career has sinced stalled, having appeared in only 118 big league games over five seasons, including 22 in 2011 with the New York Mets, his current organization.

Reliever Ni Fu-te was the first player to make the move from Taiwan's Chinese Professional Baseball League (CPBL 中華職業棒球大聯盟) to the majors, making his debut with the Detroit Tigers in 2009. He spent the most recent season on the Tigers' AAA-affiliate Toledo Mud Hens.

Then there's Wang Chien-ming 王建民, the most successful by far of all the Taiwanese who have played in MLB. Wang, of course, was a 19-game winner with the hated New York Yankees in both 2006 and 2007, and became the pride of Taiwan in the process. After being sidelined by injuries for a couple of years, Wang pitched himself back into the picture in 2011 with the Washington Nationals, finishing with a 4-3 record and 4.04 ERA. He should be part of the Nats' starting rotation in 2012.

MLB career stats for all the above Taiwanese players can be checked out at baseball-reference.com.

Here's hoping that Chen Wei-yin will be able to make the jump from Japan to North America...as long as it isn't with the Yankees.

When the chips are down

Christmas is almost upon us, but you would have a hard time knowing so here in Fengyuan 豐原. Sure, there are a few stores with some Xmas decorations up, and the occasional Yuletide jingle can be heard from a loudspeaker, but for the most part the scenery downtown is as usual. Now don't get me wrong - I don't expect this non-Western, non-Christian society to fully accept what is, after all, an alien holiday, and I'm not feeling any disappointment or sadness about this situation. Rather, I just know that somewhere out there in the blogosphere, there is a Westerner who has posted something about the bright decorations he/she can see in Taipei 台北, noting that the Taiwanese have embraced Christmas with a passion (I recall one overly enthusiastic blogger a few years ago who remarked that the people here were even more excited about the holiday than the folks back in his/her home country. This person was writing from Taipei, of course). I had planned after work to walk into downtown Fengyuan and take a photo of how it was mostly business as usual in these parts, but due to the effects of the full-blown cold I've come down with, in the end I just sneaked a quick picture of this food vendor's sign before getting on my scooter and going home. Hiding among the characters for yibao 刈包 and rùn​bǐng 潤餅 (photo) is the Japanese word わさび, wasabi.

Tis the season for goodwill to all men, or at least it seems so for Japan's Elpida Memory エルピーダメモリ , according to this Kyōdō News 共同通信社 article from today's Japan Times ジャパンタイムズ:

"Chipmaker Elpida Memory Inc. is thinking of forming a capital and business alliance with Taiwanese semiconductor maker Nanya Technology Corp., sources close to the matter said Thursday.

Elpida aims to take advantage of the tie-up to improve its business performance, which has deteriorated from the strong yen and falling prices for its mainstay dynamic random access memory chips, the sources said.

But it remains uncertain whether such an alliance will form because Elpida has sued Nanya in Taiwan and the United States for infringing on its DRAM patents.

Under the plan, Elpida will consider licensing Nanya to manufacture Elpida products, while focusing on cutting-edge products at its plant in Hiroshima Prefecture 広島県, the sources said."

Chips are big business in Taiwan, and Elpida is a major player here. It might seem kind of odd to be simultaneously suing and wooing a bitter rival/potential partner, but losing ¥56.76 billion ($726.6 million/NT22 billion) over a six-month period earlier this year might have something to do with this move. In any event, it appears that Nanya isn't very interested at this stage, at least according to the Taipei Times:

"Nanya Technology Corp (南亞科技), the nation’s biggest PC DRAM chipmaker, (Thursday) denied any knowledge of a plan to engage in technology and capital tie-up talks with Japan’s biggest memory chipmaker, Elpida Memory Inc, as has been reported in the media.

The Taoyuan 桃園-based chipmaker’s comments came after the Nikkei Business Daily 日本経済新聞 reported yesterday that Elpida Memory was set to start talks next month with Nanya to form an alliance. Creating a holding company was one of approaches being studied, the Nikkei said.

The speculation came after most local DRAM chipmakers drifted into deep losses because of weak chip prices, which have plunged over 55 percent since May this year..."

Apparently there isn't much peace on earth when it comes to Japanese/Taiwanese chipmaking operations. Let the chips fall where they may!

Sticks and stones may brake my bones, but bricks are really heavy

The onset of a cold combined with my usual gastrointestinal troubles have left me with some unexpected free time this morning. Seeing as I'm not in the best of moods right now, it seems like a good time as any to rant and rave, so here goes...

A rather disturbing letter was published in yesterday's edition of the Taipei Times newspaper. You can read it here, but to summarize things, a non-Taiwanese man was out for a walk one recent evening with his Taiwanese wife and bicultural children. Seeing a local man on a scooter with two kids, he stopped to upbraid the gentleman for the latter's failure to see to it that the children were wearing helmets. As anyone who has been here for a while can tell you, kids riding on scooters without any kind of protective headwear is a sadly all-too-common sight in Taiwan. The Taiwanese man didn't take kindly to a foreigner telling him off, and proceeded to call a couple of his friends, who soon showed up at the scene. One of his mates was armed with a brick, which he proceeded to use on the back of our hapless 外國人's head. Fortunately, no serious injury occurred , but an ugly incident will no doubt result in some unpleasant memories of life in Taiwan.

It's probably only a matter of time before the blogosphere is lit up with comments from local foreign residents pointing out that the letter writer was "arrogant" and somehow "had it coming". There is some truth to this, as I wonder as well why he felt he the need to remark to the Taiwanese man on what the latter should or should not have been doing. I wouldn't have said anything, and not because I would be afraid of getting a brick to the head. Basically, it's none of my business. Taiwanese adults are not naive innocents who have little clue as to the dangers of riding a scooter without a helmet (many adults do, in fact, wear helmets while their kids go without!). They know the perils, but have chosen to ignore them, and take the risk of a serious injury (or worse) happening to their offspring. It isn't my place to tell them otherwise, but if something nasty should occur, they won't be getting much sympathy or understanding from me (I'll feel sorry for the children, of course, but nothing for their parents). I don't allow my daughter to ride on scooters, except for short trips in the neighborhood with her mother, and then only if she's wearing her bicycle helmet. Had I been in the letter-writer's shoes, I would've just kept on walking without saying a word, and just hoped that nothing terrible would happen to the kids.

What will bother me about the inevitable remarks from my fellow non-Taiwanese residents will be the feeling that the foreigner in question will have somehow "deserved" what happened. For no matter how arrogant someone might be, or appear to come off as, there is no excusing a violent physical assault as the one described in the letter to the Taipei Times. Unfortunately, there are too many 外國人 here living in a different world than the one I'm familiar with. These souls inhabit an alternate Taiwanese universe where all the locals are warm, friendly and fuzzy, and every experience is worth treasuring and sharing with others via the various forms of social media available online. The fact that unpleasantness does occur even on the Beautiful Island is a threat to the Orientalist lifestyle they have worked so hard to establish, and any outbreaks of xenophobia, racism or just plain, good old fashioned thuggery has to be quickly contained and isolated. This is usually done by blaming the victim ("the obnoxious white guy"), and finding excuses...er, I mean reasons for why the local person acted the way they did. After all, one of the keys to being a contented foreign resident in Taiwan is the opportunity to explain the Local to the Outside (i.e. Western) World, though only within the narrow parameters that the happy foreigner has set up. 

Now, I'll be the first to say that I have met a lot of great people here in Taiwan. But by the same token, I've also encountered a lot of boorish louts (and their equally repulsive offspring). I've had a number of unpleasant encounters over the years, many of which I admit were my fault, or which I certainly could've handled in a much better manner than I did. However, there have also been many cases where the only thing I did wrong was to have been born outside of Taiwan. Luckily, I've never encountered anything as serious as the experience of the letter-writer. I like to think this is due to the fact that I keep to myself most of the time, limiting my interaction with the natives to only those times when communication is required. I'm also taller than most people here, which no doubt intimidates some would-be troublemakers, especially when they are by themselves. And some of these folks probably can sense that I'm a tightly-wound individual who doesn't react well to stress, and therefore decide I'm not worth the trouble of fucking with. Certainly, if anyone came at me with a brick, an altogether different story would have appeared in the Taipei Times, and not in the Letters to the Editor section. 

In any event, I don't harbor any fantasies about what a wonderful place Taiwan is, and how swell the people here are. Like anywhere else in the world, there are good and bad, and all kinds in between, and you have to deal with all of them (and they with you). The Old Tea types might revel in how wonderful their lives are here, but I'm all too aware of the undercurrent of violence that runs through Taiwanese society. As the letter-writer learned the hard way, when some Taiwanese are made to feel "humiliated" or "wronged" by someone else (a feeling made even worse if the other person is a foreigner), they will resort to violent means to restore their honor. Such folks are hardly the norm here, but at the same time they are far from rare anomalies, either. And as the letter makes it very clear, status in this society isn't earned by standing up for yourself, it comes from being able to get others to do it for you. The father of the helmet-less children didn't attack his criticizer himself; instead, he got a couple of buddies to do it for him. And it's not just hapless outsiders that are on the receiving end of this. In today's China Post, there's a story about a group of (admittedly drunken) civilians who attacked and injured 9 military personnel on Kinmen Island 金門. The reason? Apparently someone named Chang 張 had a dispute with an officer at a military base, and

"...instigated his friends to come to the base's front entrance which ultimately ended in assault..."

The moral of the story is...well, I don't know, actually. I'm sick, and just rattling off whatever pops into my head right now. I guess the point is to enjoy your stay in Taiwan, but be aware that it isn't all brightness and sunshine out there. Keep a low profile, and more importantly, keep your cool and mind your own business. If trouble does arise, do your best to extricate yourself and your family from the situation. 

And, most important of all, watch your back.

Merry critters

For some reason, there were lots of big, green grasshoppers to be seen along Trail 6 in the Dakeng 大坑 area this afternoon. Perhaps the cooler temperatures are making them lethargic, because it was very easy to get up close to them. It must be a good time of year to be a bird. It definitely is a good time of year to hit the trails, as the afternoons are warm, the air is dry and the skies are sunny and relatively clear:

The Japan Times ジャパンタイムズ has an interesting article in its Tuesday edition on the experiences of an American who was at the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant 福島第一原子力発電所 on March 11 when the earthquake and tsunami struck 東北地方太平洋沖地震 (3/11 memories haunt American at No. 1 plant). There's a local connection as the man is based in Taiwan, and is married to a Taiwanese woman. 

Taiwan hikes, like Taiwan girls, are easy

In 1993, Japan's Tōkyō Broadcasting System 東京放送ホールディングス aired a "documentary" on the "Yellow Cab" イエローキャブ  phenomenon , with footage purporting to show Japanese girls in Hawaii doing drugs and sleeping with local Lotharios, as well as young women cruising bars in Roppongi 六本木 and Yokosuka 横須賀 on the prowl for American men. The camera followed one older woman going into a love hotel ラブホテル with her foreign pickup for the night, and there was even a scene that alleged to show an African-American man looking and acting like a pimp. It wasn't long after the program was shown on TBS, however, that it emerged that many of the events depicted on the show were staged. The so-called "pimp", for example, turned out to be a local gaijin 外人 actor who was under the impression that he was doing a scene for a TV drama. What was meant to be an exposé of the scandalous behavior of Japanese women turned out to be a scandal involving deceptive and misleading "investigative journalism."

I was reminded of the TBS affair this morning when I followed a link on Facebook that led me to this report on the sexual availability of Taiwanese women to Western men. You don't have to understand Chinese to be able to follow what the program is talking about. 15 seconds into the clip it becomes clear the report is going to focus on "easy" Taiwanese girls:

As one of the comments on Facebook put it, "It's bullshit news from a bullshit news source". Unfortunately, it's the kind of story that goes over well in this country, playing up to the stereotypes of the oversexed foreign male preying on the virtuous local female, and corrupting her pure Confucian morals in the process. It's no wonder that the average Taiwanese is, to put it bluntly, a dumbass when it comes to perceptions of the outside world and the people that inhabit it. Of course, mention is rarely made of the countless numbers of brothels masquerading as KTV's and "barbershops" dotted all over this island, where sex is readily available at reasonable prices.

OK, perhaps I'm being a little too harsh. After all, I come from the country that considers the likes of Michele Bachmann and Herman Cain as serious presidential candidates, and where far too many people have their views of the world shaped by Fox News. So, on a gloriously warm late fall afternoon such as the one today, it's better to stop thinking about stereotypes and instead focus on the great outdoors, which is what I and my daughter did this Sunday.

If you're looking for an easy walk in central Taiwan, you can't go wrong with the Tianti Hiking Trail 天梯健康步道 in Dongshi 東勢, a 2.6 kilometer (1.6 miles) mountain path of wooden stairs and stone lanes that winds it way through orchards of bananas and persimmons. Though Amber complained at times of feeling tired, she managed to complete the walk without any discernible loss of energy. The bamboo walking stick no doubt helped:

There were some good views to be had of Dongshi below:

There was also some nice scenery on the other side of the mountain:

In addition to the fruit orchards, groves of betel trees dotted the mountainside:

Amber crossed that bridge when she came to it:

The trail begins and ends at the Tiangong Temple 天公廟:

There was nothing wrong with the camera when I took this photo. The small room to the right of the main hall of the temple was filled with incense smoke.

For directions on how to get to the trail, read this Compass Magazine article. Here's a video showing the walk that Amber and I did today.

All's Quiet on the Eastern Front

As you may (or, more likely, may have not) noticed, things have been a little quiet in Kaminoge's small corner of cyberspace. Partly that's because not a whole lot has been happening lately - mostly the usual stuff, such as work, broken up with the occasional hike and time spent with my daughter. We've also been devoting our efforts to getting ready for Christmas, as in setting up the (artificial) Xmas tree, and buying and wrapping presents. But mainly it's because, instead of publishing new posts, I've been concentrating on the old ones. For you see (and you should, because you're reading this on Blogger), I've thrown in the towel on Sponge Bear. It's been a good run, and not to toot my own horn (but I will anyway), I did win a couple of awards ("You like me, you really like me!"), but the hassles of dealing with LiveJournal have become too much to bear. If it isn't the constant string of technical problems, it's the deluge of spam, much of it in Cyrillic, that floods my humble little blog on an almost daily basis. 

So instead of focusing on what's new, I've been devoting much of my computer time to bringing this blog up to snuff. After a great deal of effort, and with thanks to Michael Turton and, especially, my old friend and coworker from my Tōkyō days (懐かしい) S.T., I was finally able to import my old blog postings from Sponge Bear to A Curmudgeon Abroad. I wasn't able to carry the comments and videos over, unfortunately, but the entries are intact, along with most of the photographs. Now I'm going through all of them, one by one, cleaning up the text and deleting things that are no longer relevant (or have gone missing over time). It's slow going, but my goal is to do one months' worth each evening, and I'm now up to September 2007. It's an exercise that's both fascinating and depressing - on the one hand, it's been fun going over the old photos, and watching Amber growing up in those posts. But at the same time, it's hitting home how much of a rut I've been stuck in for the past several years, and of how I always seem to be whingeing about the same old things. Do I really sound like a broken record? (Don't answer that, and you young 'uns out there please don't ask me what a record is.)

At the risk of exemplifying what's written above, here's a sign I came across this evening in Taichung 台中:

The owner of this massage establishment (I hesitate to say "parlor", because this place seemed aboveboard) has gone for the trilingual approach, with the sign presenting the menu in three languages - Mandarin (not visible, but off to the left), English and Japanese. What's more than a little odd is the choice of hiragana 平仮名 for rendering the Japanese words. Why write ぜんしん when 全身 would be understood by any potential Japanese customers? Why use まっさーじ when a.) it should be written in katakana 片仮名 (i.e. マッサージ); and b.) you've neglected to include the part about feet (足 aka あし)? Then there's the use of えん, as in "yen" or ¥. Is the owner hinting that, while I need to pay NT700 (about $23) for a body massage, a Japanese visitor only has to fork over ¥700 ($9 or NT270)? A clear case of discrimination...unless the writer of the sign didn't know that 元 is pronounced as gen げん in Japanese. And, finally, just what the hell is a "Gua-sha" or かっさ? Now I wish I had included the Mandarin when I was framing the photograph.

Kaminoge - still as anally retentive as ever over things no one else would ever care about.