Tang Yuan/湯圓

昨日は冬至だった。今の私からすれば、ちょっとインパクトが薄い。冬の短い日が本当に嫌いだから、今までは毎年凄く冬至を楽しみにしていた。でも台南の夏と冬は日の長さがそんなに変わらないので、昨日言われた時までは完全に冬至の事忘れていた。

台湾では冬至に「湯圓」と言う物を食べる習慣が有る。（珍しい事にウィキには湯圓の日本語ページが無い。）餅の中に甘い物が入っていると言う食べ物だ。たしかこういう物は日本にも有ると思う、名前忘れたけど。先のウィキページを読んだら、中国北部では塩っぱい物が割と多いと分かったけど、流石、台湾人は甘い物好きだから、昨日食べたやつは全て甘かった。胡麻フィリングも落花生フィリングも食べた。しかもお湯に黒砂糖をガバッと入れたし。

Yesterday was the Winter Solstice.  Usually I would be looking forward to the days getting longer, but  I almost totally forgot about it because the length of the days doesn't really change all that much here.  However, I was reminded of it because I had the chance to participate in an authentic celebration of the Solstice with some Taiwanese friends.  People in Taiwan eat Tangyuan on the Winter Solstice.  As you can see from the Wiki page, there are variations in when they are eaten, and what's in them, but the people I had them with said they are a Winter Solstice food, and the ones we had were all sweet.

 買う時はこういう感じだ。
Here's a package of Tangyuan.  These ones have a sesame filling.  There were also ones with peanut filling.

 お湯に入れるだけの簡単に作れる物だ。まあ、昔は多分そうじゃなかったと思うけど、現代はなんでもかんでも便利やけんね。
To make Tangyuan you have to be able to successfully boil water.  This is probably a barrier to entry for some people, but the group I run with is pretty smart, so we were ok.

 忍者匙！

 出来立てのはこういう感じだ。
This is what they look like when they're done.

 黒砂糖に入っている湯圓。
For one batch we added brown sugar to the boiling water so that there was a sweet soup in addition to the Tangyuan themselves.

 マリオも登場した。でもちょっと機嫌良くなさそうだなぁ、、、
Mario also made an appearance.  He looks a little down in this photo...

あ！頭をマッサージすれば、笑って呉れるとね！
But it turned out he just needed a temple massage.

雀はどこに行っても一緒だ/Sparrows are the Same the World Over

キャンパスでこの可愛い雀を見掛けた。雀は台湾でも、日本でも、紐育でも、一緒に成っている。
人間も、どこに行っても、顔や性格などは詳しい違いが多少に有るとは言えるけど、基本的には同じものだ。雀は国境を超えて、戦争を起こしたりしない、いや、元々「国境」と言う物は無い。雀は人間にとって見習うべき友達だろう。
、、、と、今週花蓮と沖縄を旅している間に思った。どこに行っても、優しい人と出会う事はしょっちゅう有る。人と一緒に過ごす時間はもっとも大事な時間だ。人を大事にするのは一番大事な仕事だ。みんな、お互いに優しくしようね。

I took the above two pictures on campus a little while back.  Sparrows in Taiwan look just like sparrows in Japan did.  They also look just like sparrows back in NYC.  (Or "hopping birds" as my friends and I called them as kids.  We were city kids, so we only knew of two kinds of birds: pigeons and hopping birds.)
Because I was traveling in Hualian and Okinawa this past week, I had the chance to meet lots of people I had never met before, some of whom I will perhaps never see again.  When you travel around a bit, you discover that there are nice people all over the place.  Much like sparrows, people are pretty much the same no matter where you go.  Imagine if we lived in a world where we could fly wherever we want without worrying about things like borders and wars.  I think there's a lot we could learn from sparrows.

帰って来た！／I'm back!

台南に帰って来た！でも流石に一週間の旅は疲れてしまった。今度花蓮と沖縄の写真を載せるので、お楽しみにしてね。

I'm back from my trip to Hualian and Okinawa.  It was a week of traveling and being busy every day, so I'm too tired to do anything now, but I want to put up at least some of the five hundred odd photos I took, so please look forward to them!

Pigeon Series

 A pigeon, viewed from my dorm.

 A pigeon on the walkway

Up close.

以上で、明日からちょっと花蓮、そして沖縄に行って来る。めっちゃいい写真ば沢山撮って来るけん、楽しみにしてね。

Drinking Water and Failure at Life/飲料水、また人生自体を失敗する人

火曜日に奨学金を貰う為に試験を受けてみる。テストの内容には、俺がまだ勉強していない内容も有るので、今週末、月曜日まで、受験生生活を送る事にした。今日は、飯を食う時とランニングした時以外は部屋を出とらん。（ランニングも必要だよ。運動しないやつは勉強を上手に出来ない。）

でも流石に疲れて来た。だからちょっとブログでも書こうかと。

I'm in the middle of cramming for a test on Tuesday.  If I do well on it, I can get delicious cash payments every month for the next six months.  Unfortunately for me, some of the stuff in the test is stuff I haven't studied yet, so I'm in the midst of going over the chapters in the textbook I haven't done yet in the hope that I'll at least be sort of familiar with that stuff when it comes up on the test.  Actually, thinking back on it, I think this may be the first time in my life I've ever crammed for a test.  It kind of sucks.  I don't know how people I knew did this all the time in high school and college.

 蛇口からそのまま水が飲めると言う事を考えた事が有るのか？もしかして考えた事が無い人も少なくないかも。でも、台湾ではそれが出来ない。と言うか、飲む事が出来ない訳ではない。台湾の水道の水はそこまで汚くない。俺なら飲んだ事が有る。でもしない方がいいと言われている。そのため、大学の施設や寮などにこういう飲料水機械が普段に設備されている。熱湯と、お水と、まあまあ暖かいお湯、三つとも出して呉れる。これが寮に有るのは本当に助かる。もし無かったら、外の飲料水の自動販売機で瓶を満たすか、コンビニで買うしか無い。
At any rate, I'm taking a break from studying, so I'll introduce you to the exciting world of drinking water machines!  We in NYC rarely think about the fact that delicious, potable water comes out of our taps, fresh from the Catskills upstate.  It's pretty cool.  However, it's not like this everywhere in the world.  Even in the US, while tap water is considered potable just about everywhere, in some places it tastes a lot better than in others.  And outside the US, tap water is sometimes not meant for drinking.  In Taiwan everyone recommends that you not drink the water.  It's not horribly dangerous or anything.  You can use it to brush your teeth, you can even drink it if you want, it's just not recommended that you use it as your primary source of drinking water.  For that we have machines like the one above.  Public buildings, like the ones at the university here, just about always have these.  My dorm also has one on each floor.  It dispenses water in three flavors: cold, hot and boiling.  That last one means it can be used to make instant ramen, the easiest of foods on this earth to make.

昨日、水を汲みに行った時、この風景を見た。（「汲みに行った」っておかしいかな。でも現代的には合っているだろう。）上の写真にも、下の写真にも見えると思うけど、インスタントラーメンの麺が散らかっている。というのは、誰か、この寮に住んでいる人の中に、つまり、大学試験を受かって進学した人間の中には、インスタントラーメンすら失敗せずに作れない人も居るって意味に成る。なんで！？インスタントラーメンを作るの失敗するのか？誰？マジで誰？お願いね。小学校に戻ってもう一回義務教育を受けて呉れん？なんでこがん麺の散らかっとっと？どうしてこがん状況に成ったと？というか、片付けろ。腹立つさぁ。
And yet, what do we have here?  Look carefully at the two photos.  Do you see instant ramen noodles scattered about?  What we have here is the ultimate in Failure At Life.  Some guy--in college, possibly graduate school--went to the machine to make instant ramen, and was unable to do so without experiencing failure.  Look at the photos again.  There's failure everywhere, scattered all over the machine's drain and the floor in the form of instant ramen noodles.  How do you fail at instant ramen!?  If you can't make instant ramen right, then what can you do?  Anything?  (At the very least, if you're a moron and get noodles everywhere, could you at least clean up after yourself?  Or call your mom and have her come down and do it for you.)

ああ！すっきりした！勉強頑張ろう！
At any rate, thank you for reading my kvetch.  I need to get back to studying now though.

Finals Week/期末テスト

 華語中心のバルコニーからの写真。
A photo from the balcony of the Huayu Center.

 Dogs!

Itchy dogs!

明日は主な華語授業の期末テストだ。応援宜しく！
I have my final test for my main Mandarin class tomorrow.  (And yet here I am posting dog photos on my blog.  Back to work!)

Late Night Karaoke/夜中のカラオケ

写真は以前撮ったけど載せるチャンスが無かったやつらだ。この話と関係無いけど。
台湾の大学生には面白い遊び方が有る。日本と同じく、カラオケはとても人気が有る。私は初めて台湾でカラオケに行った時には、台湾人の友達と何時行くかを皆で相談してみた。一人の男は午前三時行こうと行ったけど、彼はよくジョークを言うタイプだから、彼がふざけていると私は思った。でも、他の人と話してみたら、彼は真剣に言っていると分かってきた。なぜ午前三時にカラオケに行くかというと、そういう変な時間帯にもし行ったら、格下げして貰える。社会人からすれば、午前三時にカラオケに行って、朝六時とかに帰るのはちょっとキツいけど、大学生はわりとスケジュールがルースで、又皆はあまりお金が無いから、この時間帯にカラオケに行くのはおかしくない様だ。
日本でも有るかな？私は五年間日本で働いていて、しょっちゅうカラオケに行ったけど、相手は普通一緒に働いている同僚で、あまり大学生と関わる事が無かった。もしかして、日本の大学生でもやっているかな？アメリカは台湾や日本などの程カラオケは人気が無いので、お得と言っても、夜中にカラオケに行くアメリカ人の若者団がちょっと想像出来ないなぁ。

I went to Karaoke last night again.  Karaoke is pretty popular in Taiwan, more so than the US.  However, there's an interesting habit that the college students here seem to have.  It surprised me the first time I encountered it.
The first time I went to Karaoke with Taiwanese people, we were discussing what time we should go, and one guy suggested 3 am.  He jokes around a lot, so I just thought "Yeah, right, we're going to go at 3 am.  Very funny."  However, I quickly realized from the discussion afterwards that he was being serious.  It turns out that since the Karaoke places are open all night, they charge cheaper prices if you show up early in the morning.  That's the time when most people are finishing up their singing, so it's kind of dead time for them.  College students all over the world having fairly open schedules, and being the lovers of bargains that they are, it's pretty normal for a group of students here in Tainan to go to Karaoke at 3 am or whatever.
I never encountered this in Japan, though admittedly I didn't hang out with college students much.  I mostly went to Karaoke with coworkers, some of whom were in their 50's, so not surprisingly, we didn't tend to start anything at 3 am.  I really don't know if college students do late night Karaoke in Japan as well.  I don't really think that college students in the US do this though.  Karaoke just isn't as popular in the US.  I don't think I ever went even once in college, certainly not at 3 in the morning.