American Eagle Turkey Luncheon

Leona contacted Plaza International Hotel and went to pay for a roasted turkey dinner she will pick up fresh and hot on Saturday. It cost 1898NT ($63us) a price I can afford to buy in one night’s work at American Eagle. There will be owners Teddy, Celia, their sons, Jonathan and the big clean-up guy, Zoe and Antonio, foreign teachers Darren, David, and Agya, and perhaps the other Taiwanese desk clerk with the camera; 10 people plus Leona and me. Nicole was regretful that she can’t make it. Everyone is supposed to bring beverages, appetizers, and desserts.

11-30-13 7:09am Sat. (1)

      The corn on the cob is cooked. The apple sauce and potato latkas are ready, so is the pumpkin squash. Leona will make matzo ball soup this morning and perhaps a Caesar salad. I will make stuffing after Jia-Hui’s cousin class at 11:30am while Leona takes the scooter to pick up the turkey and quiche. Then, I will set up the extra table in the dining area. The ten guests are supposed to be arriving after 1:00pm.

 

      I just made the stuffing adding the sautéed Portabella mushrooms and chopped chestnuts. Now only the salad and soup are left to be made by Leona

 

Hope you all had a Happy Thanksgiving! Leona and I made a Thanksgiving luncheon for eleven people in my surrogate family this Saturday, my colleagues and bosses' family at the after-school center where I teach twelve hours a week. I made everything but the turkey, a ten-pounder made at a local hotel restaurant. I made potato latkas (for the second time in Taiwan) for Hanukkah which falls on Thanksgiving eve, apple sauce (because you can't find any in Taiwan) matzo ball soup (no one here's ever eaten before!) stuffing (Stove Top I brought from Brooklyn) and Ocean Spray Cranberry jelly; one guest remembered the lines from the can around the circumference. Meanwhile, Renna called from Richmond, VA to light candles and sing Hanukkah prayers with me.Leona had a good time after all!

Golden Horse Awards Show

11-24-13 8:10am Sun. (1) [copied from hand-written journal.]

      The news on TV is about the Golden Horse film awards program. It could have been the Academy Awards except for the Mandarin speaking Asians dominating the stars at the Sun Yat-Sen Memorial Hall in Taipei showing up in their snazzy cars in front of a sheet of plastic that they do the duck walk down the red carpet in front of the hall. It’s only entertainment so the hundreds of millions of Mandarin-speaking Asian viewers can see the twinkle in their Mandarin-speaking Asian stars’ eyes, an alternate universe to the Caucasian show in English with a token smattering of entertainers not from European dissent. At least, in Taiwan, you can bring your own food and drink into the movie theater with you.

Big Red Motorcycle and Treadmill

Leona and I went to her brother’s house for dinner on the spur of the moment. We brought cake for the kids. While there, he showed us his expensive new two-year-old Kawasaki motorcycle. It’s big and red, and a waste of money. I think of the $5000 AC/DC Pinball Machine Leona wouldn’t buy for my birthday last year. I would have spent as much time playing that as Shih-Dong will riding his motorcycle, and for a lot less money, and it would have looked good in the still-empty indoor patio. Oh wel

11-23-13 3:53am Sat. (1)

      Leona went and bought a treadmill for herself yesterday. I don’t know why she doesn’t just go jogging on the bike path near the Han River or even ride a bicycle. She’s not going to use the treadmill half of the year when it is close to ninety degrees in the enclosed patio. She can use it now until March or April when it will start getting hot. She did go to the gym in Brooklyn almost every weekday to exercise and she’s been complaining that she gets winded climbing stairs and needs more exercise. I will never use the treadmill. I like being in the real world on a bicycle and I like getting out of the condo. The treadmill must be around $2500us. We can afford it and I hope she uses it in the best of health.

 But I am a little jealous still about not having the AC/DC Pinball Machine I saw back in May. I know I don’t need it and I wouldn’t use it more than a few hours a week. I can’t pass judgment on what Leona thinks she needs. But I’m not going to get something I don’t need because I’m jealous or because someone thinks I should have it. For example, Leona has been talking about getting a car. I am not going to buy a car. I don’t want one or need one in Taiwan. On this tiny overcrowded island, where could I go, anyway, that a bus or train couldn’t take me? .I already told her she is doing the driving if we get a car. I’m not driving her around.

Leona used the new treadmill for the first time last evening. She said it was good but has to figure out how to place the laptop in front of her on the stand while she works out. The treadmill is facing the window and the mountains to the east; a nice view. The rug behind between the treadmill and the JVC entertainment center covers the electric wire that’s plugged into the side of the building on the enclosed patio. I’m not going to mention the AC/DC Pinball Machine or Rowe CD jukebox that isn’t out there. The indoor patio could use some more plants. I still see the tiffany style ceiling lights from 1210 Ave Y going up there one day though that is DOA, too. There is still room on the walls for the Matrix movie poster, James Dean, and Laurel and Hardy.
 

Flower Show in the Mountains

11-14-13 7:02am Thurs. (1)

      At 9:30am, Leona’s cousin is picking us up to go up the mountain to a flower show. I would rather go with Leona alone but, apparently, there is no bus and her scooter wouldn’t make the climb with or without me on it. Leona also lacks motivation to do too much beyond the neighborhood. I have to struggle with her whenever I want to leave Taichung.

 

Right now, I’m getting dressed and taking a ride up the Han so I can get back by 9:30 and the trip to the flower show.

Lim It-Hong: The Taiwan Martyr

11-10-13 7:18am Sun. (2)

That typhoon passed south of Taiwan due to northwest winds this time of year. Yesterday, after teaching Leona's seven-year-old niece and her two twin cousins EFL, we got on a train north past Miaoli to visit a fellow malcontent we'd met in 2003. His cafe has had windows broken twice by enemies as he helps locals and youth organize against arbitrary government land seizures. With Leona's help, I made my case for him and his protégées to join the IWW. He has the property right to sit on the fence, which he did. We met the young cultural hero who threw a sneaker at the head of the local corrupt mayor and saw the sneaker itself. The young man is basking in the limelight proud of being sued but lacks content of character or purpose. Leona got riled up in a conversation with a politician who was in the cafe. I guess malcontention is contagious. Today I will ride the bike to Taichung Port to hand out IWW business cards I made, but mostly to enjoy the ride and listen to Hendrix on my iPod.

      Lim It-Hong is now divorced and living in a shabby house in the middle of a field not far from the shore outside Miao-Li. His girlfriend came downstairs after Leona and I arrived around 3pm yesterday. We stayed there until 8pm in his café about fifteen minutes from his home talking with him and Gary, a protégée. I tried to sell them on joining the IWW and gave he and Lim the Taichung radio interview CD’s and the IWW Mandarin introduction. I explained that the immediate benefit of joining the IWW was the structure it would lend to their organization, international outreach and solidarity to their efforts, endurance to their endeavors, and funds to their treasury. It would link them to a international anti-capitalist movement. As typical, no one was willing to commit and Lim didn’t help by saying his efforts were not labor oriented. I said that if the bulldozer drivers who raised the house in Miaoli were union, they wouldn’t have crossed the picket line. He couldn’t disagree. I think he just doesn’t want to dilute his power by sharing it with an outside organization. He wants to have all the glory. He’ll fail if he does so. I hope he reconsiders and joins me in the IWW organizing here, for the sake of the young restless radicals.

 

Anti KMT Demonstration

11-8-13 6:37am Fri. (1)

      Sunday in Taichung at the new baseball stadium, there is going to be a KMT convention. Demonstrations are expected.

11-10-13 9:28pm Sun. (*2)

      I made 100 IWW business cards. I handed out 10 yesterday at Mr. Lim’s café in Miaoli. I have 77 left which means I handed out only 13 at the anti-KMT demo today. It seemed like I handed out more.

      I had a nice day today. I rode to near Taichung Port via Wen-Xin Road and route #12, Taichung Port Road, soon to be renamed ‘Taiwan Road.’ The Dadu mountain in-between Taichung proper and the port is formidable. I had to walk the bike up the incline halfway there and back. Of course, going down the mountain is a breeze.

      I arrived after 1 1/2 hours at a Family Mart and was lucky to meet three of the young men and ladies from Lim’s café the day before. They welcomed me in their car and drove around the blockaded area where the KMT was having a meeting (guarded by 2000 police) to a small area far from the action. Only about 300 people were there, throwing shoes again; that’s what they’ve been reduced to doing as the government chips away at their livelihood to satisfy a Chinese takeover.

The workers in Taiwan are doomed to KMT/CPP corporate/government oppression but it doesn’t mean they can’t still organize informal unions. Like the IWW does, they must fight their boss one workplace at a time, and eventually industry wide, whether in Taiwan or China. In neither place are independent unions legal, not that having legal business unions in the USA has helped workers much, anyway. Mr. Lim It-Hong must realize a boss is a boss from anywhere and stop saying it is urgent that something be done now to stop the inevitable; he could be preparing his protégées for a lifetime of union solidarity organizing and struggle in the workplace instead. The peaceful revolution offensive will happen in the workplace and we defend ourselves when they attack, which they will. 

Finga's Fine Foods

        Finga's Italian Restaurant (17-1, Ching Cheng Rd.; tel. 327-5450) and Finga's Pizza and Pasta (B3-level, B Building, Chung Yo Dept. Store; tel. 226-1670) are providing a full Thanksgiving dinner on November 23 for NT$850 a person. Finga's Fine Foods (7, Ching Cheng Rd., tel. 327-7750) is offering take-away turkey dinners on the same day--call for price. Throughout November and Decembers, Finga's is offering full roasted turkeys (anywhere from about 12 to 18 pounds) for NT$200 per pound, including two pumpkin pies, stuffing and gravy, or a half-turkey with stuffing, gravy and one pie for NT$1,600.

11-18-13

      We went to Finga’s yesterday when we went to the Westside to look and see if we could get a kitten. When I got back from my bike ride, Leona made the suggestion to go. We got on her scooter and went. We went to the park where they had an anti-nuclear rally months ago. There, in a park were some stray animal advocates gifting pets, mostly dogs. There were very few cats and one of them, a three-month-old orange tabby with a white chest, almost became our new pet. We decided to think about it and took a walk to find Finga’s.

      Gilles had mentioned Finga’s a few weeks ago when we went for a ride up the mountain for a snack one Sunday afternoon. Leona and I were on the scooter heading to the Westside when I asked if we would be near Sogo, where Gilles mentioned we’d find Finga’s near. Leona said yes and I thought of going to Finga’s for the pickled beets he’d mentioned and the pumpkin pie I saw advertised on their Facebook for Thanksgiving. Gilles had said they were a restaurant/grocery and I was expecting to find a little supermarket. I called Gilles on my cell phone when we arrived on the Westside and he gave me directions. Amazingly, after a ten minute walk from the park, we found it, a little hole-in-the-wall with a faded round orange awning. Inside there were a few tables, not more than five or six, and a counter behind refrigerated showcases with some cheese and delicatessen items inside. To the left, there were baked goods where we found a delicious rye bread; real rye bread! On the shelf with a few random imported items, we found pickles but no pickled beets. There was Vegemite in case I wanted to sample the Australian favorite and even some boxes of Kraft Macaroni and Cheese. My attention went to a freezer case in the back left corner in which I spied Italian sausage and other sausages, homemade! I then spotted a can of Libby’s pumpkin that I plan on trying to make a pumpkin pie with. Leona spotted a tin of anchovies in oil. I felt like we had hit the jackpot, thanks to Gilles. It was the second time since our trip up the mountain that he’d steered me right, the first one being Palio’s Pizza just up Dong-Shan Road; the best pizza I’ve had since we moved to Taichung. Merci beaucoups Gilles, mon ami.

      For dinner, I made the sausages which were a little spicy, lean, and delicious. I also made an antipasto salad with baby lettuce and greens Leona had gotten along with some Genoa salami, prosciutto, and home style mozzarella, capers and anchovies. I also put some dry meat and cheese on thin slices of Italian bread and baked them with a drizzle of extra virgin olive oil, real olive oil, not the adulterated shit that’s been exposed in the Taiwan media recently. We also finished the bottle of Chilean red wine

Leona had gotten the day before with the bread. It was a fine dinner I made, and I let Leona know it was her I was making it for. She loved it!

A Cousin's Re-Habbed Condo For Rent

11-6-13
When I got home at 10:30am, I went with Leona in her cousin's car to a tenement slum condo her cousin bought for 1.5 million NT ($50,000us) in a ratty old building. She's fixed up an apartment on the fifth floor walk-up with an illegal apartment built on the roof. Rent is 6,000NT a month ($200us) After washing two enormous and dangerous windows (dangerous because they are two feet off the floor with no bars) I waited until the cousin and Jenny, the woman who brokered our condo, were ready to leave at 3:30.

Chandelier, LED Shower, & Mushroom Mountain Tea Time

The chandelier in the dining area and the sink, toilet, and shower head in the master bedroom were installed yesterday. They all look good with adjustments. We agreed and I changed the bulbs for the chandelier to lower unfrosted brightness. The water for the shower was heated more so there could be more pressure when I mix it with cold water. Leona even relented and we bought a little closet for the master bathroom to store talcum powder, soap, extra toilet paper, after shave lotion, shaving cream, etc. instead of leaving it out all over. She bought a new shelf for inside the shower stall to hold the shampoo, at my request, too.

 

11-3-13 7:02am Sun. (1)

      I had tea time at a mushroom gift shop’s restaurant up in the mountains with Gilles yesterday afternoon. It was a good diversion from what I’ve been doing

Earthquake Again

11-1-13 8:41am Fri. (1) 141-82  

      There was a 6.0 earthquake at 8:02pm yesterday as I sat in room 401 at American Eagle. I barely felt it but the two teenage boys in the class were ready to cut downstairs. I told them not to since I felt the earthquake waning. It was the third +6 earthquake this year. Leona said the ceiling light in the living room and the flat-screen TV on the entertainment center were shaking but nothing fell. Nala ran under the bed and Sweeney-Poo looked alarmed but stood still.

Taiwan Worker Organizing

10-29-13 8:58am Tues. (1)

. I want to be a catalyst and motivator for the IWW organizing in Taiwan but Catta and Yihan are the main ingredients; without their dedication we’re losing a beat. They should be getting Cooloud and Youth Labor to sign up and help organize the union here but they, admittedly so, don’t know much about the IWW themselves. Only Henry’s translation I gave them has guided them. I openly suggested someone translate the Agenda into Mandarin but they didn’t take the request. Maybe Lennon, if he joins, is more mature at 32 years old to take some more responsibility than the 22 year olds. Martin Gross was great, well-committed and responsible, a half hour early. Catta and Yihan were fifteen minutes late and Lennon didn’t show up until an hour later, after Catta text-messaged him.

      At the meeting Yihan agonized over how the IWW could become relevant to workers in Taiwan. He kept talking about the Taiwanese character of conciliation with their employers and acceptance of top-down management. This is not only a Taiwanese impediment to unionizing workplaces. I suggested we take Elizabeth Gurley Flynn’s tact of agitating workers who have been displaced by mismanagement. For example, workers from the Chang Chi Foodstuff Factory Co who made substandard food products will be on furlough and possibly lose their jobs. The IWW could suggest to them that they take over the factory after the owner files for bankruptcy, as he probably will. The same is true of the workers from Chyuan Shun Food Enterprise Co that was found mixing cheaper Vietnamese rice with Taiwanese rice and selling the mixture as domestic rice in August 2013 or Top Pot Bakery’s lies about not using artificial flavorings which will affect workers who could lose their jobs. These workers need agitators and organizers and may be prone to listen to IWW ideas of self-management and organizing. Martin seemed to understand what I was talking about. I also mentioned how Sun Yat-Sen socialist, perhaps anarchist, leanings could be a thread with which to agitate Taiwanese workers and move them from acquiescing to employers sways. At any rate, the IWW has to become known in Taiwan to labor groups and organizations and fellow workers. Martin’s idea of a business card is a good idea. I explained how adding articles and endorsing workers organizations to our blog (www.taIWWan.blogspot.com) and Facebook page (taIWWan ROC) and the main IWW website could be used to put us on the page in the Taiwan labor movement.

 

10-29-13 8:58am Tues. (1)

Tamshui Weekend

10-21-13

      The barbeque with Leona’s cousin’s family is out because her son can’t get a ticket back from college and her aunt’s boyfriend doesn’t want to come. Next Friday, Leona said twelve of her college friends and significant others will have a dinner we’ll join in Taichung.

      Leona made reservations at a hotel in Tam-shui for next Saturday night. I suggested she come up with me to Taipei Saturday and stay overnight before we head back to Taiwan University for the 2pm Wobbly meeting. I don’t want the meeting to be the only reason I’m heading north. Having fun with Leona is much better.

 

10-26-13

I am sitting in the lobby of the See Hotel in Tan-shui with Leona upstairs in the room. We have a nice view of the river and the mangrove and the land across the river where, Leona reminded me, a woman in a coffee shop killed two of her customers out of greed. When I'm finished with this I will go upstairs unless Leona comes down in the meantime. There is breakfast in the hotel which she'll probably want to have before we step out for the day. We now have five hours until the IWW meeting near Tai-Da University in Taipei. It takes under an hour to get there from here. We will probably leave here by twelve so we can have lunch at that Thai restaurant we like.
We got into town at 3pm yesterday and walked from the train station to the hotel. After a brief unromantic rest, we took a minibus to "Old" Street downtown. It was funny because the area where our hotel is like the Rivera with nothing but mangrove and water and mountain in front of the road and MRT train but once you get up the hill to the north a thousand feet away, it is typically shabby Taiwan with motorcycle repair shops and bing-lan stands, and tons of traffic. The "Old" street is kind of nice winding near the shore of the Tan-shui River with old shops and plenty of food and things to buy. We had dinner there at the city's oldest seafood restaurant; fresh steamed fish, shrimp, oh-ah (fried oyster) and an interesting cold vegetable that tasted a little like bamboo shoot. Leona said it was a seasonal plant that grew in stalks along the waterside. I have no idea what it is but it was good.