Jeou-Fen and Eslite Book Store, Taipei

Leona and I just got back from three days up north in and in Taipei; went to a place called Jeou-Fen, a former mining town on the mountainside with long tourist alleys. It was on a Thursday so most tourists hadn't gotten off of work or school yet; it's the only time to go travelling in Taiwan if you don't want to get trampled or in a traffic jam. The next day we had Passover Seder with a hundred Jews, mostly from Israel, and a rabbi from Hong Kong originally from Brooklyn. It was a nice dinner (tasted kosher, Leona said) and light on the prayers, thank God. Leona hooked up with two college friends for tea time chats. The only disappointment for me (besides having no sex) was finding the fourth floor music department of Eslite bookstore closed for renovation! I almost cried when I saw the escalators blocked. The bookstore, however, was open, one of the largest English selections in Taiwan. I spent around 2000NT-$64 on six books but got a discount. Here’s what I bought:

 Three Collins Classics: John Keats Selected Poems and Letters, Robinson Crusoe, by Daniel Defoe*, Arabian Nights, translated by Sir Richard Burton, an edition that I hope to exchange because I didn’t know doesn’t include three of the most famous tales (“Aladdin’s Lamp,” “Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves,” and “Sinbad the Sailor,” all supposedly added in the 1700’s by the French translator), 1421; The Year China Discovered the World, by Gavin Menzies, Destiny Disrupted; A History of the World Through Islamic Eyes, by Tamim Ansary, and Danube, by Claudio Magris, translated from the Italian by Patrick Creagh. (*I hope to exchange it as I already have a copy.) I am lucky to have the time to read but I can’t read more than an hour at a time or I get distracted. I can read in the morning up the river and in bed before going to sleep. The books I’ve been reading before bed, Marco Polo and Helen Keller; The Story of My Life, I’m both about half way through. They are dry and I can only read ten or so pages at a time. Meanwhile, I shot through Clapton; The Autobiography and am shooting through Jews Without Money, by Michael Gold. Jack Kerouac’s On the Road waits in the queue and I’m putting it back in the bookcase for when I’m ready.

      There are five books that I’ve finished reading and won’t be reading again. I want to donate them to Belling’s Deli and Bar where there is a small English lending library or even drop them in one of the city reading boxes; there’s one in front of Chung-Yo. They are: Forrest Gump, Around the World in Eighty Days, Of Mice and Men, Life of Pi, and Light in August.

Reaction to English Taiwan News Posting

2-16-15 

     The weather has been beautiful the past few days. I am sitting on the patio while writing this. I have resumed riding up the Han River after our return from Cambodia and extra nights in Tao-yuan and downtown Taichung. I am bringing one book with me to read again when, for a few weeks, I had started bringing two and even three; my attention was getting dilated. One book is enough to read. 

     There have been over one hundred fifty hits on the opinion piece in the few days since I wrote "Sacrificial Sunflower Fools" in taIWWan and posted to English Taiwan News blog. There have even been about seven people who commented including Michael Turton who called my piece "high comedy." Everyone who commented is not ready to volunteer to help organize workers into unions.

      One clown who commented on the piece mistook me for a "pan blue" blogger until Turton put him straight. One guy insulted the Wobblies and used fear of violence to condemn labor organizing. Another turkey said unions are good but the Sunflower protesters are, too. Of the fifty plus hits, not more than twenty went back to the "Stinking Kettle of Fish" opinion piece I referred to which named some in the DPP responsible for co-opting the movement. I don't plan to respond to any comments. No one wrote to me directly. Two people liked the post including the author of the blog.

      There’s some schmuck who claims he’s been in FAPA for years and didn’t like me writing, “FAPA wants to keep American influence strong in Taiwan; their lobbyists pander to congressmen and senators with a means to do so.” There’s also a fear monger named Les Sharp who feels the need to defend Sean who wasn’t at all being attacked. Courtney Donovan Smith, the creator of the Facebook page is sitting pretty. He’s no friend of the union, either; none of them are, except for some guy Courtney knows called Red.  

78 Record Player

2-15-15 

 Leona got me a classic 1920's Victor crank 78 rpm record player yesterday on Valentine's Day. We got it at a brick-a-brac store on the Westside after we had had lunch at nearby Istanbul Turkish restaurant. I think she said they wanted $500 us with a 15% discount but I told her to offer $400; I don't know how much she paid. The proprietor of the store told her she had bought twenty models in India in various conditions and that parts were combined to create seven playing models. Ironically, I have no 78's to play in Taiwan; I discarded many 78's and gave others to Simone for safe keeping. The rest I gifted to Tiger, Leona's colleague at the library. I feel embarrassed to ask him for them back since I gifted them to him and he was glad to receive them. 

DPP Uses Youthful Protests

2-13-15

      I copied the paragraph in the last journal entry about the 119 fools in the so-called Sunflower Movement protests, meaningless protests that got nowhere and helped no one except the police who could fine-tune their reactions to the next useless student demonstration. I shouldn’t say “meaningless” protests. The protesters, encouraged and advised by certain clandestine agent provocateurs in the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) were the icing on the cake of Kuomintang defeat in the November 2014 elections. They did for the DPP youth vote what appointing washed up death metal egotist Freddy Lim “Youth Outreach Coordinator” couldn’t for Frank Shieh in the 2008 presidential election defeat to Ma Ying-Jeou. The DPP has learned to use the youth as sacrificial lambs for their own pro-American neo-liberal agenda. There is no “lesser of two evils” in a choice between Chinese and American power in Taiwan. The working people must have the power and there is only one way to get it: clandestinely through direct action in the workplace. After seventy-eight years of the United States de-facto colonization of Taiwan, a “Free China” free for only big business interests, and the same lack of democracy, though more transparently anti-union, Chinese power take-over is not the answer either, in the short-run. Until the youth of Taiwan get off their skinny asses and start educating, agitating, and organizing themselves into workers unions, wages in Taiwan will continue to tumble down to Mainland Chinese levels until working here or there is interchangeable in wages, already at the level it was in Taiwan sixteen years ago. A Chinese worker’s salary in some cities has already caught up to the Taiwan worker’s salary. For a family in Taiwan or China to survive, fighting for independent union rights is the only way out. 

Passover in Taipei

I got an e-mail Feb. 4 from Rabbi Shlomi in Taipei. Here’s what he wrote:

 I was reading your blog (which is a very interesting and well written if I may add) after searching for something else in the Internet (you know how it works...)I wanted to ask: are you still in Taichung? Would love to connect if you have time.  Hoping to hear from you back...

Hi Rabbi: I am retired in Taichung with my wife. We regret not meeting you when you came down on the Hanukkah holidays; maybe next time you're in town, we can get together. Be well, David

Thanks so much for your reply! I would love to meet with you next time I’m in town! What’s your phone number? Will give you a call when I know when I’m coming. Looking forward to hearing back from you…

Hi Rabbi: Send me an e-mail when you're planning to come. Be well. David

           I am not ready for phone conversations with a rabbi. Religious people are generally too conservative and bigoted for me to like. Dr. Rabbi Einhorn, who is 93 and still living in Taipei, was an exception. He helped me a lot with my family and then condoning my separation with the kids from my ex. The first question I would ask Rabbi Shlomi would be about him. 

3-16-15 

     I would like to go the Passover Seder in Taipei on Friday April 3rd. The dinner would cost 1,200NT for one person but I would also have to spend $50us to get to Taipei and back by HSR. Leona doesn't even want me to invite Joe Cooperman and family over here for a Seder. Leona is shy to meet new people. It doesn't bother me. I can go by myself as I did to synagogue in Brooklyn every year for Rosh Hashanah but that was something you do alone, anyway with the women segregated in the conservative temple and no talking inside (like anyone followed the rules.) We always celebrated Passover at home with the children, even the minimal ceremony. Leona was fine with that and even contributed to cooking. I bring it up again because I received an e-mail reminder this morning. I will be regretful if I don't go. I will ask Leona again when she is fully awake, when I get back from Mandarin tutoring. I don't want to get angry with her because of it. If she agrees to let me make a Seder with the Coopermans here (even if they decline) I won't go to Taipei.

 Leona and I are going to Jeou-Fen the four-day weekend of April 3-7. That Friday is the Passover Seder in Taipei. During Hakka lunch yesterday, I suggested Leona and I attend it on the way to Jeou-Fen. She didn't disagree so it looks like we are going to the Seder. She couldn't argue with it or say I was becoming religious in my old age because we had celebrated Passover every year with the kids in Brooklyn. I am pleased she accepted my plan. 

4-5-15 

Leona and I just got back from three days up north in and in Taipei; went to a place called Jeou-Fen, a former mining town on the mountainside with long tourist alleys. It was on a Thursday so most tourists hadn't gotten off of work or school yet; it's the only time to go travelling in Taiwan if you don't want to get trampled or in a traffic jam. The next day we had Passover Seder with a hundred Jews, mostly from Israel, and a rabbi from Hong Kong originally from Brooklyn. It was a nice dinner (tasted kosher, Leona said) and light on the prayers, thank God.

Siem Reap, Cambodia Vacation

2-9-15 

      Six days ago we left for Siem Reap, Cambodia. We slept there four nights, and then returned to Taiwan to sleep one night in a hotel in Taoyuan and one night in Taichung. I wrote journal only one during the trip (on the plane going there) and did no reading of the books I brought with me choosing to glace at an American baseball magazine I bought at the airport and Ancient Angkor, a book I bought from one of the many children selling outside temples for $10 us; I could have gotten it for $1 if I had waited.

      The first day we arrived at dusk, were picked up in a Mercedes Benz van along with five other Taiwanese and were driven by our exclusive driver and tour guide to the first of nine restaurants, four of them buffet. Despite eating food deemed safe from contamination, Leona and I still had diarrhea from stomach virus, hers beginning Thursday night and mine the night we returned to Tao-yuan where I spent the night with terrible chills. Siem Reap is a poor, dusty city of ramshackle houses mostly built on stilts. The places we ate were all tourist spots, mostly Chinese and South Korean.

      For five days, the tour guide, a native Chinese-Cambodian, gave a running commentary, in Mandarin, from his front passenger seat with Leona and I in the first row behind and the other five tourists in the third and forth rows. No one besides the guide and Leona said hardly anything the entire trip. Occasionally, Leona translated for me; occasionally I understood what he was saying in Mandarin. The tour guide couldn’t speak a word of English. It is my biggest regret of the trip that the tour guide was obviously so informed and loved talking but 99% of it was lost on me.

     

Visually, and physically, the forty temples we visited with hundreds of structures attached was dazzling and taxing; there was a lot of climbing stone stairs and pyramid walls. There were a million scenes that could be sat at and contemplated and hundreds of thousands of carved images on the sandstone temple walls to inspect; too many to pay close attention to in only a few days. All the thousands of bare-chested women carved into the stone were different in facial expression or gesture, but all had the same sized exposed breasts; only one had a skirt that was half-parted. All the Hindu turned into Buddhist mythology was chiseled into everything, even boulders in the wash of a river. The ruins of building blocks and statues lay scattered around the ground buried and caked with soil; dozens of temples were falling apart. A few were refurbished by the goodwill of international donors and United Nations support in this World Heritage Preserved Site.  

Back in Taiwan, there are still two weeks until the Lunar New Year vacation ends and I return to my class at American Eagle on Feb.24^th. I have a head start on controlling my weight thanks to the stomach virus from Cambodia. I bought a bottle of Cointreau at duty-free at the airport but we gave it to Ellen and George as a gift. 

3-30-15 

     I was sent an e-mail from Ravi, the man I met while walking up the brook with stone carvings to the ruins of temples in Siem Reap, Cambodia recently. He told me he was responsible for Red Cross charity from India and I believed him. Anyway, I am proud to have met a person I can respect unconditionally; it is rare in this day and age.

Prosecutors indict 10 in Taichung girder incident

TWO-MONTH PROBE:：Prosecutors alleged numerous instances of negligence, inadequate supervision and breaches of safety regulations at the MRT building site

By Jason Pan  /  Staff reporter

Thu, Jun 11, 2015 - Page 4

Prosecutors yesterday wrapped up a two-month investigation and announced the indictments of 10 individuals, including officials and technical staff of a contracting company, in an April 10 steel girder incident in Taichung that left four people dead and four injured.

The incident occurred during the construction of an elevated section of the Taichung MRT’s Green Line.

A 209-tonne curved box girder fell from a height of about three stories onto a busy road just after 5pm during the late afternoon rush hour, reports said.

Yesterday’s indictments by the Taichung District Prosecutors’ Office cited human error, a lack of worksite supervision and dereliction of duty in breaches of the Occupational Safety and Health Act (職業安全衛生法) and charges of professional negligence causing death (業務過失致死罪).

Among the primary causes of the fatal incident was a decision reached by company officials, site supervisors and technical staff to not install a temporary support frame for the girder, prosecutors said, in what officials described as an attempt to reduce expenditure and accelerate the work schedule.

Without the temporary support frame, crews were unable to balance the weight of the curved box girder properly when hoisting it onto the concrete pillars, which led to the collapse.

Leading the list of indictments was Taipei City Department of Rapid Transit Systems (DORTS) associate engineer Wang Chi-shen (王起森), who was in overall charge of supervision at the work site.

The Taichung MRT project was commissioned to DORTS, due to its experience planning and constructing the Taipei system.

Prosecutors charged Wang with neglecting his supervisory duties, as he was not at the work site on the day of the accident.

Wang also faces forgery charges, with officials saying he altered daily inspection reports 10 days later on April 20 in an attempt to falsify work supervision records.

Prosecutors also said that Wang failed to report and stop numerous breaches of safety rules by contractors, including hoisting steel girders during the day, a task which the city’s regulations stipulate can be performed only between 11:30pm and 5:30am.

The other individuals charged were officials, staff and workers of the contractors, which included Far Eastern Construction Co, China Steel Structure Co, Bi Jie Hoist Co and Chin Yi Co.

In the statement announcing the indictments, prosecutors cited numerous instances of negligence, inadequate supervision, breaches of safety regulations and the contravening of professional work standards at all organizational levels ranging from DORTS engineers overseeing construction, to contracting firm supervisors and work site crews.