My Life as Adoga

A heavy fog enveloped the mountain range this morning, hiding the green forests behind a wall of grayish blue shadow that the morning sun has already begun to burn away. Even this “mystifying” beauty, however, was not enough to dispel the rage brought on by the newspaper headline: Dalai Lama Not Welcome to Visit. The attention-grabbing headline was connected to a very short bit of news from the news conference offered by the ineptitude that was elected to lead this independent nation for the next four years. At his news conference yesterday, The Ineptitude was asked for a response to the Dalai Lama’s expressed interest in visiting Taiwan next year. The Ineptitude responded: “We generally welcome religious leaders from all over the world to visit Taiwan, but I think at the current moment the timing isn’t appropriate.” As recently as March 23, 2008, The Ineptitude had stated he would welcome the Tibetan leader’s visit to this island nation. For their part, the spokespersons of the Dala

Well, a short-lived English-teaching phenomenon is over, at least for the moment. It was in the news today that Tainan City garbage trucks had, six months ago, suspended indefinitely their broadcasts of English lessons. "The city government decided to temporarily suspend the service because it has so many other policies it needs to deliver to residents," said Environmental Bureau Chief Chang Huang-chen, as quoted in the Taiwan News (September 6, 2008). Well, considering that nobody could ever really evaluate the effectiveness of the service, it seems appropriate that the mobile loudspeakers now carry warnings of health problems in Vietnamese and Thai "for the benefit of foreign spouses who do not understand Chinese." Tainan City has, according to the news article, recently been struggling with a spreading crsis of dengue fever and enterovirus. In these circumstances, I think we can forgive the bureau's decision to "trash" the city's "English T

Witi Ihimaera: A Life in Writing Witi has won numerous awards for his writing in the categories of short fiction and full-length novel, starting with the publication of the Pounamu Pounamu short story collection (1970), which was followed by another collection of short works, the “overtly political” The New Net Goes Fishing (1977). His list of full-length novels is impressive, beginning with Tangi (1973) and Whanau (1974). The Matriarch (1986) is complemented with a sequel, The Dream Swimmer (1997). While in the United States, Witi wrote Dear Miss Mansfield (1989), after which came Bulibasha: King of the Gypsies (1994). Witi took a daring turn with Nights in the Gardens of Spain (1996), his first gay-themed novel. A focus on relationships and male sexuality continues in The Uncle's Story (2000). Witi’s most recent work is The Rope of Man (2005). In Ihimaera: His Best Stories, the Anniversary Collection (2003), Witi offers a personal choice of stories accompanie

On Tuesday last week (July 1, 2008) I had the good fortune of attending a workshop co-sponsored by the Taiwan government’s (Executive Yuan) Council of Indigenous Peoples and the New Zealand Commerce and Industry Office . The event was a dialogue between internationally renowned New Zealand author Witi Ihimaera and Taiwanese aboriginal artists Badai (novelist), Sakinu Tepiq (戴明雄) (filmmaker), Walis Nogang (educator), Paelabang Danapan (scholar), and Dadelavan Ibau (ethnomusicologist). The wor kshop was important for wh at was said, as the speakers addressed a number of issues th at are of relevance to indigenous peoples and com munities around the world. Topics of equity, excellence and justice for indigenous peoples were brou ght to the foreground. In his opening remarks, Ihimaera set the focus upon the necess ity of indigenous people coming together to discuss and even deal with local issues that are disturbingly global in scope. These crises—which include the loss of cult

Who'd a thunk it? Or in this case, who'd a drunk it? This video was taken a few weeks ago at a Thai restaurant that doubles as a microbrewery. I had the fortune, good or bad is for you to decide, of being there when they had one of their regular beer-guzzling competitions. And the winner is... hey, don't look at me. I was the designated driver.

The two Jackies show their nervousness after a big thunderstorm. Yes, this Adoga has a couple of Indonesian myna birds, one of which is threatening to soil the keyboards even as we "speak." Problem is, only one of the birds is friendly enough to be a good pet, so it looks like in a couple of weeks the larger and more unfriendly bird will be returned to his original owner in Pingtung. Hand-raised, these birds are faithful to their "parents." I've seen them follow my friend around as he worked in his yard outside his house. He whistles to call them when they stray, and they return like well-trained dogs. He gave me these two "brothers," both of whom are n amed Jackie. Unfortunately, the Jackies are terribly aggressive to my other home-roaming pets, and today's attack upon my sparrow (rescued from a certain death as a hatchling kicked out of the nest) and bulbul (a trade from the bird breeder who couldn't keep my ailing baby dove alive) was especi

A couple of days ago I went to EVA Airlines ticket center to reserve my flight to California, and it was there I noticed a photograph on a poster showing an EVA Air jet sporting a Hello Kitty motif. It can't get much worse than this. Then again, maybe it can. Below are some photos of a car parked in the Costco lot. Note the bad taste in auto decoration. At bottom is a link to a pdf article on "Hello Kitty and Identity Politics in Taiwan." Article: Hello Kitty and Identity Politics in Taiwan (2000)

All right, I'm going to confess my ignorance (as if admission is necessary when something is so blatantly obvious). I don't know what a "moral center" is, at least insofar as how it is referred to by Academia Sinica sociologist (tell me really, who can trust a sociologist ?) Wu Nai-teh. In an article in today's Taiwan News , scholar Wu is quoted as saying that the DPP leadership has for the past eight years suffered from a "confusion of power." This he defines as President Chen Shui-bian's failure to figure out the challenges he was facing and his resulting inability to meet people's expectations. I'm not going to get into my old argument again, which is that no matter what the president could have done or tried to do, he was stymied every step of the way by a vicious self-interested opposition party (the evil blues) that controlled the legislature and the press. The evil blues would either kill a piece of legislation outright, or pervert it

It seems a bit of scandal affecting both blue and green has not gotten the attention it deserves. Here's the artic le from the fanatically green Taipei Times . I couldn't locate an article from the rabidly blue China Times about this topic, but that might say more about my poor Internet search skills than about the politically biased coverage of the paper. The article speaks of charges that a fugitive businessman has made "payments" to national legislators (of both parties). If an investigation proves that the politicians have taken money from the businessman, pictured here, then the question must be "why?"--why was the money offered, and why did they take it? The other "why?" of course is why do the people continue to vote for politicians with questionable ethics? KMT Caucus Urges Probe into Payment Allegations By Flora Wang Published in the Taipei Times , Saturday, Mar 29, 2008, Page 4 Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) caucus

"Communicating with [China] is a good thing. But it would be terrible if the condition to do so were that we give up our own dignity and sovereignty." These were the words offered by DPP (Democratic Progressive Party) Legislator Lee Chun-yee (李俊毅) at Taiwan's national legislature in reference to KMT (Kuomintang) Vice President-elect Vincent Siew's (蕭萬長) attendance at this coming weekend's Boao Forum in China. Lee and other DPP politicians were expressing their discomfort with Siew dropping his title as "VP-elect" and his attendance at an event at which it is assumed all participants are in agreement regarding the “one China" policy. My comments here have little to do with the specifics of what Lee and his colleagues within the "green" party said about Siew's conference participation. Instead, I wish to opine on the general tone of these comments, which I see as unnecessarily aggressive and smelling of spitefulness. DPP caucus whip Yeh