Happy New Year!

HAPPY 2009 EVERYONE!
We had a pretty lame New Years Eve but we have a good excuse. Apparently, Jenny wasn't up for going out and dancing until 5 in the morning. What kind of 9 month pregnant woman doesn't want to go out and get her freak on?
Actually, I wasn't the least bit interested in going out either. Teaching until 9:30 pm kind of wore me out.
So instead, the three of us and Bao Bao sat in bed and watched the fireworks go off on Taipei 101 at midnight. Teak was being anti-social and sleeping in the living room.

Anyways, I hope you have a great 2009!

Check Up

We had another check up today. The baby is fine but starting to get quite big for Jenny's small frame. She wants to give birth naturally but the doctor is kind of hinting that it might be a bad idea. His estimated weight today is 7.27lbs. The doctor was very surprised that he had grown so much in a week. (Must have been the Christmas turkey.)If we have him this week, it shouldn't be much of a problem as he is perfectly positioned and has a very strong heart beat. However,if he decides to hold on until the due date, which is January 7th, she might need a C-Section. The weight is an estimate though, so maybe he isn't as big as the doctor thinks he is. The Taiwanese are pretty damn good at math though, so I would bet the doctor is damn close in her estimation.

Jenny is doing well though. Her feet are starting to resemble those of Fred Flintstone's but I have resisted the urge to burst out, "Yabba Dabba Dooo!" when she walks into the room. She can't see her feet, so we will just pretend that they do not look like they could power a car with stone wheels and a brontosaurus in the backseat.

Christmas

Merry Christmas everyone. I hope this finds you all well and/or drunk. We had a great Xmas which was a welcome surprise because I thought it was going to be a pretty quiet one. We ended up scrounging together a last minute Christmas party at our place though and we had a lot of fun. I got an Elmo Live toy for Christmas. Jenny saw me watching a video of him on the internet and laughing my ass off so she bought one for me. It is going to be so fun to buy toys again. They are getting cooler and cooler every year. The cats aren't too impressed with Elmo but he is definitely a party pleaser. (Which I will get to later.) A package of freshly baked cookies from my mom arrived in the afternoon and after a workout, I got to cooking. I have a whole new respect for those of you that have been cooking us turkey dinners for the last 30 years. That is damn time consuming. But again the booze helped.


Later on, Terry, Tricia and two new friends from Madison named Eric and Sara joined us. They just moved in upstairs. So it is great to have a couple of cool people in our building. Terry was hysterical as usual and later one of my best friends here named Mike joined us. He has been living in Kaoshiung for the last couple of years but has moved back to Tainan. So we are spending a lot of time together again. You might remember hearing about him ages ago. He is the one that took me in as a total stranger when I first arrived in Taiwan. He taught me how to ride a scooter and sold me my first motorcycle. He is the only guy I know that likes babies as much as I do and has been very helpful in keeping me calm. He even went out and bought us a really expensive Baby Snuggly which is totally perfect. I felt guilty though as it cost a fortune.




I am definitely starting to feel the nerves now. Jenny, however, is a rock and says she isn't worried at all. I wish I could be as chill as her. I told her a couple of months ago to take off her rings before her hands started to swell too much. She took off her engagement and wedding rings but left one ring on. Long story short, her hands became so swollen yesterday that we couldn't get it off no matter what we tried. She finally went to a jeweler today and had to have it cut off. Luckily it was just silver. They said that they probably wouldn't have been able to cut off the platinum wedding bands. Anyways, I digress...
Dinner was great and mom's cookies proves a big hit as did Elmo. After dinner everyone sat around listening to him tell stories and jokes. Then, we forgot about him and got back to our conversations. A few minutes later I was telling everyone a story, while Elmo sat quietly next to my chair. Just as I was getting to the punchline, Elmo stood up through back his head and let out a loud yawn which brought the house down. It was perfect comedic timing on his part and slightly creepy.


So Christmas turned out to be as perfect as it could be on the other side of the world. We wish we were there with all of you but will be soon. Along with our boy.
Happy Holidays and be careful on those snowy roads!
Lot'sa Love!

PS If you click on Elmo at the top right of my blog, you can see him in action.

Christmas Party

A Quickie

Not too much new to report in this neck of the woods. Baby is good. Jenny is good. I am good. Life is good. We were thinking we wouldn't have any presents under the tree this year and then a massive box showed up from my dad and Sue stuffed with gifts. So now the tree looks awesome.
I have been recruited to be Santa Claus at our school's Christmas party this year. Jonathon usually does it but he is flying home for Christmas. I think about 150 kids have signed up to come and they always bring their little brothers and sisters. So I probably won't be able to walk by Christmas day. December 20th is going to kill me. I will play Santa from 9:00 am to 12:00 and then drive across the city and teach from 12:30 to 8:30. Santa will need a lotta whiskey come 9pm.

We had an ultrasound two weeks ago and everything looks great. The baby is gaining weight at a perfect rate and his heart beat is really strong. His estimated weight was about 6.2 pounds. The damn doctor keeps expressing how big our baby's head is. So much for bedside manners. Poor Jenny has enough to worry about without a doctor telling her that her son has a huge melon every visit. Accordingly, we have decided to name him, "Head." Jenny can't think of any good Chinese names for him. It is tradition in Taiwan that fortune-tellers name the baby. They look at his time of birth, his weight, the astrological alignment, what the turtle shell says and a bunch of other ridiculous things and then give the baby a name which will bring him the best luck throughout his life. It seems more like how an Ewok would name a baby. I am dead set against this as Taiwanese fortune tellers are just a bunch of jokers that can't get a real job and spend half their time terrifying their customers with tales of hauntings, coming misfortune and impending doom. All of which result in them burning more ghost money to appease the spiteful spirits. So I have told my students that if one of them can find us the name we will use- I will buy them a cool present. Alas, I have taught them for quite some time and they have picked up on my sense of humor. Thus, most of the names so far are quite odd and/or twisted.

I have begun teaching my students a lot more about global warming and moral responsibility in regards to saving the Earth. It is quite depressing to see the kids outside their homes burning toxic ghost money weekly. Last week was so bad that I could not even see their school from 4 blocks away. (Which was actually the worst I have ever seen it in six years.) This is partly due to the winds bringing over all the smoke from China.

In one class, a student said, "Most people don't actually believe that the ghost money goes to ghosts but we do it just in case." So I told him that it was maybe time the Taiwanese tell the ghosts to go get a job. They thought that was pretty funny and then one student said, "But not all the money we burn is for ghosts- some goes to the Gods." To which I exclaimed, "Why would a God need money? They are a God!" They thought about this for a few seconds and started laughing hysterically. Maybe there is hope for them yet.

Anyways, that is all for now but I will post some pics of the Christmas party tomorrow.

Cold Front- Hooray

Everything here is going great. All of Jenny's tests came back with positive results and she, nor the baby seem to be at any risk of diabetes. She is very healthy and looks great. Two different friends both commented last week that if you are standing behind her, she doesn't look pregnant whatsoever. This of course scored extra browny points for the Canadians. And they weren't exaggerating. Her belly is huge from the side but if she is waddling at you head on, she looks the same as she always has. She has a week and a half left of work and then will take a break for the next four to six months. She will still teach some private classes at our house but she won't be teaching at the school. I am quite happy that she did decide to take time off because we have enough money with my income and SO many students are sick right now. I am worried that they will pass it on to her.
One of my junior high classes last week looked like they had all been consumed by the plague. There were 18 kids in the class and only one wasn't sick. So the first thing I did the next morning was go get a flu shot. I am sure it will be $8 well spent.
Our weather finally cooled off and is now glorious. It is 27 degrees today, which sounds hot but it is quite chilly when you spent the last 6 months in 34- 36 degree weather. At night it is dropping down to about 20 degrees. We finally unplugged the air-conditioners which will save us some coin. I forgot how beautiful the Taiwan winters were.

The nursery is almost finished. I still need to blow up big-sized pictures for the walls but other than that, we are done. The countdown now begins for my son to enter this world. 48 days and counting...

I am so excited to look into his eyes, feel him squeeze my finger and hear his voice. Although the voice novelty will probably wear off quickly.

It's A New Day

The world seems a little less scary to bring a baby into this week.
This song makes me happy.



Some might think we are naive to believe so much in a politician but there really isn't anything wrong with a little hope now and then now is there?

S M R T ?

Well first of all- OBAMA!!! OBAMA!! We can finally not be embarrassed to live next to the American people and the world seems like a less scary place to bring my son into. But enough about the election. Let's move on to the real story.

Yea... I am not so smart. This will come as a huge surprise to most of you but it is true. Take this week for example...

I decided that instead of painting the nursery, I would have photos of stuffed animals blown up to huge proportions and mounted on pieces of wood. This would cost a fortune in Canada but it is quite cheap to do in Taiwan. So after scouring the internet for hours looking for suitable pictures, I realized that the only images big enough to do this with- cost a fortune to download. So I asked my mother the photographer to take some photos of stuffed animals she had lying around the house. She came through, put them on a CD, mailed them to Taiwan and we chose three to use. I carefully measured the size of the walls that I wanted to cover and upon writing down my desired dimensions, we hopped on my scooter and drove around to several print shops before finally finding one that could do what I wanted. Which was to have the photos blown up to 60 by 40 sized prints and mounted on boards which we could then cover the walls with. I was a little worried that the photos taken; even with a professional quality camera may not have a high enough megapixel resolution for what I wanted to do. We gave them the CD with the images on them and they assured us that it would be no problem to do so without losing picture quality. Things were coming along nicely. As ol' Hannibal from the A-Team used to say, "I love it when a plan comes together." They then offered us an astoundingly cheap price to do so. I was shocked, excited and a little bewildered at how much lower the price was in Taiwan compared to Canada.

A day later they called to say my wall hangings were ready; which impressed me even more. I asked Jenny to ask them if they could deliver them because I didn’t want to try and drive with these massive pictures on a scooter in Taiwan traffic. She didn’t have their number to do so as neither of us had picked up their business card. So I decided to double her there and then have her take a taxi back with the pictures. We were both concerned that they might have been too big to even fit into a taxi as they would not be bendable.

Upon arriving we were shocked as the clerk presented our purchase to us. Have you figured out where this is going?
They are metric in Taiwan! We are metric in Canada. I have been using the metric system since grade 3. Why the hell would I measure the wall in inches? Now then... if you will excuse me, I am off to go get a 3 dollar haircut.

Halloween

Happy Halloween everybody. I hope you are all well. We are doing well. We had a bit of a scare this week with the pregnancy. Jenny’s family has a history of diabetes and the doctor called to say that there were some issues with Jenny’s last blood test. So we rushed in to get checked out and apparently she is borderline diabetic. It is strange because she never really eats anything that causes diabetes. Regardless, we now have to get checked up more often and she has to really monitor her eating in order to avoid any major complications. I am sure she and the baby will be fine though. He is still break dancing in her belly non-stop. Definitely an active little guy.
My school didn’t have a Halloween party this year. I think because the economy is getting worse so they can’t afford to do big parties anymore but I decided to celebrate nonetheless. The Taiwanese are incredibly scared of ghosts and probably about 75% of them not only believe in the deathly ghouls but also believe that ghosts will try to hurt them whenever possible. Enter Danny with his newest monster mask and his Canon Powershot. I began bursting into classrooms of unsuspecting children, howling while recording their reactions. Man can Taiwanese kids scream. You can see one of the videos on my Facebook. I scared Jonathon and another Teacher Steven really bad, too. I generally don’t stick around after scaring Jonathon as he told me about a year ago, after a particularly good string of frightening encounters -that he would punch me in the head the next time I scared him. Thankfully, I think Halloween tricks are accepted by him, as I was not pummeled. He has a new class, which is in the Facebook video. They are all Grade 1s and 2s and new to the school. They don’t know me and have no idea about my antics. My own students are fairly hard to scare now. So the fresh blood of Jonathon’s students was a welcome treat for my Halloween. Before I left on Friday night, I used a mop, the mask and a few other things lying around to make a scarecrow in the bathroom. So whoever was the first to walk into the bathroom Saturday morning would come face to face with a monster. I look forward to hearing who that scared. Most likely our secretary.
The weeks are flying by like crazy right now. I will have a son in no-time at all. The pics below are stills I took from the videos of the terrified kids.

Photos of Scared Kids

Children tend to move in erractic motions when confronted by ghouls. Thus the blurry photos.

Just Some Pics

Not much is new here but I thought I would add some new photos of Jenny and the baby bump. We went for a check up on Monday and everything looks good. The baby's heart is very strong and so is his kung-fu. The boy seems to never stop kicking his mom and we now can actually see the kicks instead of just feel them. He weighed in at 1.4 kg which is a little over 3 pounds.

I just got in from washing my scooter. I took it into the shop to get some work done and they left it covered in thick, filthy motor oil. Despite scrubbing it furiously with grease remover, it won't come off. So I am not too impressed. The Taiwanese aren't known for their service. The weather is too freakin' hot for October. It is still 33 degrees daily. The nights are cooling down though, so that is a plus.

Some Pictures

Here are some pictures as promised. Our good friend Fanny came by to visit last night to see da belly bump.

When hair cuts go bad…

As anyone who knows me well will attest to, I am not a cheap man. I am also quite often harassed by my more “manly” friends about how much time I spend moisturizing, grooming, etc. I make about six times what the average Taiwanese person makes and despite having a baby on the way, am far from strapped for cash. So what would possess me to get a $3 haircut?

That is a question I may never be able to answer.
A chain of barbershops have opened up all over Taiwan. They are all the rage now and are set up in all the box stores. In ten minutes and for the very low price of $3, you can get a haircut. I was walking out of a Home Depot-like store on my way to work on Wednesday and saw one of these shops. For just $3, and a half hour to kill, I figured I should get a quick trim. My Chinese has gotten better and I explained to them what I wanted. In Chinese I said, “I want the sides and back a little short and the top longer.” The first girl refused to do it which surprised me and she asked if I could wait for the other stylist to do it because she was better. I agreed. She then asked if I could draw what I wanted. I am a decent artist and was able to draw exactly what I wanted easy enough. It was basically the exact same cut I had, just a little shorter. The other girl finished, looked at my drawing and complimented my drawing skills, which made me more confident that she knew what I wanted. I again explained what I wanted and she nodded knowingly and said, “No problem.”

Now, earlier that day I had trimmed my side burns. This is where I think the problem may have started. She started making small talk, while looking carefully at my hair. She then pulled out her clippers and in one foul swoop shaved the entire side of my head off to match the length of my side burn. I am not exaggerating. One sideward motion and it was gone. My jaw dropped, which she noticed right away and said in Chinglish, “Okay ma?” There was nothing I could do at this point. There is no recovery from having a two-inch thick line of your hair locked off above the ear. So I shrugged and said, “Okay.” Things went downhill from here. It just got worse and worse. She basically left me with just the crown of my head with hair. As advertised my hair had been cut in 10 minutes. Actually she had finished in less than seven. I sat there staring in the mirror as she began vacuuming me, trying to think of how I could possibly salvage something out of it. I then got her to stop vacuuming and try to get the hair at least evenly shaved on both sides. This helped a little but not much. I then had to go straight to work. When I walked into the office, I was received with awkward silence, the same jaw drop I myself had made earlier and then a “Woah. You cut your hair.” It was so bad that many of my students couldn’t even make eye contact with me.
When I got home that night, Jenny was laying on the couch reading and didn’t look up at first. I then told her in Chinese to look at my new style. She looked up, screamed and said, “Oh my god! It is so ugly! What did you do?” Jenny never reacts like that to anything. She then started laughing and couldn’t stop. She just kept saying, “So ugly…hahahaha…so ugly…why would you do that? So ugly! hahah” After hearing the story, she just laughed harder. So I tried to salvage it a bit with my own clippers and have fun with it. I am now rocking a Mohawk. Which really freaks out the locals. I will probably buck it all off this week, so I can greet my son looking somewhat normal. I don’t want him coming out of the womb and thinking, “Fuck my dad is ugly.”

Jenny is still doing great except for the fact that her husband looks like a freak. She is starting to get paranoid that something is wrong with the baby and telling me the symptoms she has. I am sure this is normal with all first time mothers. All of her symptoms have been covered in all the baby books I have read. So I calm her down by telling her it is normal and can usually spout off why she has that symptom. When she insists something is wrong, I offer to take her to the doctor to make sure. But she always realizes it is all good a couple hours later. The baby is kicking up a storm which is very cool to feel. I have explained to him that Sullivan and Luke are going to be older and bigger than him, so he has to start training early for the cage fighting.

Lemon

For those of you that didn't know before- I am a lemon. Thus, the lack of updates on the blog. I have had a miserable three weeks with just about everything going wrong that could go wrong. It all started with the discs herniating again in my lower back. Followed almost immediately with bronchitis and swollen vocal cords. The doctor told me not to talk for awhile. (Hard to do when you are a teacher.) I fought through the pain and continued swimming, which is the only form of exercise I am allowed to do. This was giving me a little relief, until my knee decided to pop out in the pool. Now, it hurts to walk and put weight on my leg and swimming is excruciating. I went and had it x-rayed. The doctor told me the joint is very swollen and inflamed and to keep off of it. (Hard to do when you are a teacher.) So now that I can't swim, my back is getting steadily worse. Sitting for more than 20 minutes at a time is ridiculously uncomfortable and my feet usually fall asleep immediately after sitting down. So, I am basically bed ridden when I am not working, which is actually hurting my neck. I haven't quite figured out that one yet but laying in bed causes my hands to go numb!

Jenny is six months pregnant and in way better shape than I am right now. If I drop a marker on the floor, I almost want to break down and cry because it hurts too damn much to bend over and pick it up. Luckily, children are easy to train and I got kids in every class that pick up after me.
I am now seriously considering taking out a loan to pay for a spinal surgery. I can't handle living in this much pain anymore. I am going batty.

Jenny, however is doing great. She looks great, feels great and is getting more and more excited about our coming boy. We have bought almost everything we need for the nursery now and are going to start decorating this week. (If mom, ever sends me those hi-res photos!) We just need to buy a stroller and a changing table and we are set. I also need to order some cool baby clothes from North America. All the baby clothes in Taiwan are super gay. Gay in a bad way. Not gay in a fashionable way. For some reason they put little bows on everything. Doesn't matter if it is a boy or a girl- it has to have bows in Taiwan. Which might be why most of the men in this country are so effeminate. Hmmmmmm.

We are getting hit by a typhoon right now. It looks bad on TV but Tainan is always sheltered from the worst of the storms due to us being surrounded by mountains. I think Taipei could get seriously destroyed tonight but we will be okay. I will try to go out and get some photos of the carnage later.

I will also add some photos of Jenny later.

It's A Boy

Well… once again my father is right, as he will no doubt be telling you the next time you see him. We are having a baby boy and are really excited about it. The last couple of weeks, Jenny had started referring to the baby as him and while out for dinner with Andrew last week, she said she was pretty sure it was going to be a boy. I sometimes hear her in the next room talking to her belly and telling him to wake up. The ultra-sound this morning proved our instincts right as my baby boy’s junk popped up on the LCD screen very clearly.



The blood work, heart rate, internal organs etc. all look very healthy and Jenny has gained three kilograms in the last four weeks. She wears it well. So we now get to start decorating the nursery which is really exciting. Christmas time in Canada is going to be insane with this many baby boys running around!

Take A Hike

Sorry for the lack of updates lately but I didn’t want to post more blogs without pictures. Speaking of which, this website BLOGGER sucks for photo options. It took me two hours to try and organize photos on here and it just wasn't happening. It either moves my text into weird places or puts all the photos at the top or bottom. So you are stuck with it looking ghetto until someone tells me a better way to do it. I got my camera back from the shop yesterday, so it’s game on. As you can see Jenny’s belly is growing fast and she looks great. I will try to get a better photo of it tomorrow, she is too tired tonight. She hasn’t been sick once during the whole pregnancy and the only real complaint I have heard from her is that her feet hurt after work- which is to be expected. She has cut down the hours she teaches and quit her kindergarten job because it is too hard to constantly be squatting, bending over and chasing twenty 5 year-olds around. They are also constantly sick which worried us. We don’t want them passing something on to her.
The baby is kicking up a storm and we are pretty sure he or she is party ninja. We are heading to the doctor’s office tomorrow morning to find out if it is a boy or girl and are both very excited. We bought the crib this week and it was delivered yesterday. Every time I walk past it, a wave of excitement and happiness runs through me. We are trying to figure out how to decorate the nursery. Any theme ideas? I am thinking "Blade Runner" meets "Snoopy."



I am doing pretty well. It is ghost month right now though. The Taiwanese believe all the ghosts in hell get to come out for one month of the year to party. (Seriously.) To keep the ghosts from hurting them, they avoid swimming, whistling at night, placing their shoes together and a ton of other strange things. Alas, to further protect themselves from the sinister ghouls of the netherworld, they burn truck loads of their toxic ghost money. This has once again given me bronchitis and a sore throat. So when Andrew asked if Jenny and I wanted to go for a hike with him and his girlfriend Sammy in Tainan County- we were all in. Sammy has a car which makes it easier to get out of the city. I can’t drive long on the bikes because my back gets too sore. I realized today I need to get out of the city more and check out the rest of Taiwan. It has been a stupidly long time since I got out of the neon jungle and had honestly forgotten how beautiful Taiwan was.
After about 45 minutes of driving, we were up in the mountains, parked the car and armed with a bottle of whiskey started walking up a jungle path to what we were told was a swimming hole and waterfall. I was a little worried about Jenny hiking at almost 6 months pregnant but she plowed on without complaint and just waved away my concerns. We eventually got to a nice spot at the bottom of a ravine. A small creek winded its way through the slate walls and thick tropical foliage climbed up both sides. The rest of the way would require both hands and feet to navigate. Jenny was happy to just rest by the creek. So Sammy, Andrew and I scaled the river bank another 15 minutes and got to a beautiful waterfall and a small little lagoon cut into the rock. It was a little piece of paradise and would have been even better if I hadn’t left the whiskey back with Jenny. Andrew and I dived in and found that you could actually sit behind the waterfall. After cooling off, we headed back down to Jenny.



Speaking of swimming, the kids go back to school tomorrow, which means I can finally start swimming at the pool again! I am very excited to get back into shape. Before summer vacation started, I was in the best shape of my life but haven’t been able to swim laps the last three months because the pool is so crowded.

Jerk Baby

We went to the clinic today to finally find out if we are having a boy or a girl. We have been putting off buying anything or decorating the nursery until we know the sex. Alas, our baby, who is apparently really stubborn and/or conservative refused to show us his/her private parts. It kept moving but every time it did, it would place a different body party in the way. After about 3 minutes of trying to coax the baby to move its foot, leg and hand and out of the way, the doctor finally gave up. So it will be yet another month before we can find out.
The baby is obviously taking after Jenny already though as I will pretty much show my genitalia to anyone. (And am totally not stubborn!)

Back From Boracay

This is not really a baby related post but I got back from Boracay late last night and thought I would post about it. The island is my new favorite place. Hands down the nicest beaches, reefs and people I have met in the 13 countries I have wandered through.
Unfortunately, I got sick my second to last day there and spent my final days throwing up in my hotel room and didn't get to do half the things I wanted to. I have the worst stomach!

Our first evening there, we were sitting on the roof top bar of a hotel as the sun was setting and I started seeing dozens of huge eagles flying across the sky. Then, the bartender pointed at them and said, "Batman." Then I realized they were not eagles but the giant fruit bats. They were unbelievably big. Like flying dogs. Or the monkeys in the Wizard of Oz. (Which terrify my mother.) My camera couldn't get any decent photos of them though as it was too dark.

We rented a sail boat for the day and went snorkeling off of some of the reefs and caves by Boracay. I have never seen so many colorful fish in my life. We were literally being swarmed in them. Every fish you have ever seen in an aquarium and many you haven't were schooling inside and out of the reefs and lava formed caves. I could have spent days just diving down and watching all the life. At one point, I asked Peter if he had seen the Moonfish. He hadn't, so I told him to look down and I would draw it out. So he excitedly stared on wide-eyed in anticipation. Once I got to the bottom I whipped out my ass and gave him a lovely bird's eye view of the majestic Moonfish. He began choking and thrashing about. Now anytime I bring up the Moonfish he complains that he can't get that sight out of his mind.

As Peter is a DJ, we spent a lot of time playing at the beach bars and made a ton of new friends. The Filipino people are incredibly warm, outgoing and charming. We spent just about every night listening to good music and dancing in the sand under the stars.

Coming home was hell however. I was still really sick and because they had just opened the new airport in Manila the day before, half of it was not working. Our plane was delayed 4 hours and there still was no restaurants or shops in the place. So we spent a total of seven hours in the place with only a hot dog and coffee stand for nourishment. Both of which are not what you want to be consuming when you are deathly ill. I got so sick on the plane that the stewardesses gave me medicine to bring down the fever. I am amazed I made it through quarantine. I was so hungry, sick and tired when we finally got back to Kaoshiung, that I just paid a cab $60 to drive me to Tainan. Anyways, it was great to come home to Jenny, the baby belly and the two cats. She still is not very big. We are going for another check up tomorrow and should find out if it is a boy or a girl. So tune in shortly for an update.

Or maybe I won't tell you. Then it will be a surprise.

Girly Sperm

I couldn't help but notice that 77% of you think I am having a girl. Is that your way of saying I have little girly sperm?

Actually, come to think of it, I voted for a boy, which means that closer to 90% of you think my sperm is not manly.

The Not So Great Flood

I have been studying Chinese as of late and getting more confident speaking. Chinese speakers complain about us having words that sound the same but mean different things. For example: Two, Too, To... Tutu
But now I have realized that the Chinese are just a bunch of cry babies as almost every single syllable in Mandarin has five different tones and meanings.
This has served up some rather funny and or embarrassing moments as of late. Take "Mi Mi" for example. It means "secret." So I told my grade six class that I knew Peter had a secret. They all started laughing. I didn't know why as I hadn't burned him yet. So I said it again. I constantly harass Peter as he is the class clown and dishes is out to everyone else. All I wanted them to do was ask me what the secret was but they wouldn't bite. So I told them in Chinese that Peter had a very big secret, which got them howling. Turns out, if you change the tone on "Mi Mi" -it means nipple.

Now that the first trimester has past, we have started telling people that Jenny is pregnant. I asked Jenny how to say, "My wife is pregnant," in Chinese. Jenny told me and it seemed easy enough. So the next day, one of my student's mothers walked into the school and I approached her to tell her the good news. "My wife is pregnant!" I said proudly in Chinese. She got this confused/horrified look on her face. So I thought maybe she didn't understand. So I said it again with a big grin. She then looked really uncomfortable and my Taiwanese coworker started pissing herself laughing. "Danny, you said the tone wrong! You just told her your wife had an affair." She then bailed me out with the mom who offered a sigh of relief and congratulations. She was probably wondering why I was so damn proud that my wife was cheating on me.

In other news, last week I was typing away on the computer when I suddenly heard a scream and loud crash from the kitchen. I ran in to find about a centimeter of water everywhere on the floor. Due to the white marble floors, Jenny did not see it walking in, slipped and fell really hard to the floor. She hit her arm so hard on the counter that it was all lacerated. I am amazed she didn’t break it, as it takes a pretty powerful hit on a smooth blunt object to cut your arm. We took her to the doctor the next morning and were relieved to see that everything seems fine with the baby. The pipes, which were installed by the evil house seller and not by the original building company are apparently poorly made which caused the drains in the bathroom floors and kitchen to overflow with water. Any time we turned on a shower, washing machine or sink, it would overflow more. While trying to bail out the kitchen, we realized that every time we threw the water in the sink, it would just come back
up through the floor faster. So we then had to start tossing buckets of water out of the window. This also meant that we couldn’t take a shower for two days. After teaching kids in 34 degree weather all day, one is in desperate need of a rinse. Long story short, we needed to call in plumbers 4 times over the last week to fix the problem as it kept happening over and over again. If they can’t fix it, we may have to tear up all of the marble floors in the house and have the pipes redone properly. Not something you want to hear with a baby coming.

With the kids out of school, my schedule has become crazy busy. I have started four more classes, which is great for the bank account but damn tiring. Once the school year starts again, most of them won’t have time for class, so I am just trying to bank as much money as possible during the summer.

My plan since finding out we were pregnant was to return for a couple of weeks this summer to meet Sullivan and see everyone but was shocked to see that the price of tickets had gone up almost a thousand dollars from last year. Jenny told me I should still go but after much debate, we decided it would be better to stay here this summer and make money. The thought of paying $2400 for the flight plus missing two weeks of work was a little scary. So instead Jenny suggested we wait until after the baby is old enough to fly and then head back to introduce him or her to everyone back home. (Not in peak season.) I think this is a much smarter option.

I do have 5 days off at the end of July though. Jenny has to work and I didn’t want to be stuck in Tainan doing nothing for a week. So I started looking into flights and found out I can head to Boracay for $350 round-trip! When I saw that price, I instantly bought the ticket as I have wanted to see the sugar-white like beaches of the Philippines for about 5 years. I never realized it was so cheap to go there or I would have done it way earlier. I thought I would be doing the trip by myself but found out my friend Peter also has a week off at that time and when I told him the price he jumped on board too. So the two of us are going to go be beach bums for six days in the jewel of Asia. Which will give me a much needed break from Taiwan.

<--- This is the beach I am heading for.

In other news, Jenny was very excited to go see Air Supply in concert. She loved them in the 80s. I was not interested in going to watch some old washed up rockers perform, so she took her sister with her. She left excitedly for the event but arrived home later quite demoralized. Apparently Air Supply’s voices and appearance have not aged well. I got a good laugh as she described them as looking like my dad or Jim but wearing tight leather pants. Note: Asian people think all us whiteys look the same.

Maturity

Jamie recently commented on the fact that she thought motherhood would mature her. Only to find herself one month after the birth of her son, making him run by the webcam like a muppet.

Maturity is so overrated. I constantly have 14 year olds telling me how immature I am.

On Monday, I went into “Danny Hysterics” during a junior high class after comparing one of my really shy, quiet student’s side profile to that of the Egyptian Sphinx in our history book. Upon comparing the two, my students noticed the similarities immediately and began laughing, as well. Then I started laughing more.

They stopped.

I continued.

This made me laugh harder. Then, I didn't know why I was laughing anymore because it wasn't really that funny. This caused me to laugh even harder and start crying. I tried to gather myself, calm down and start to read again but before I could finish the sentence my voice went up two octaves and I started giggling like a little school girl. The class just stared in awe as they watched their teacher train wreck. Most of them started laughing again due to how stupid I looked but when I couldn’t stop, they all began to feel uncomfortable as they couldn’t get their head around what was so damned funny.

Did you ever make a teacher really angry at school and begin laughing, despite knowing full well it was only making them angrier? And how, when you realize your laughing is quickly sinking you further- laugh louder? Well that is what I was experiencing at the time but also realizing that the roles were usually reversed. It is not the teacher who should be receiving disapproving comments from the students on how childish he is.

That pretty much ended my class. I spent the last 10 minutes of the lesson trying to take deep breaths and focusing… only to burst out laughing over and over again. It was then time for my next class, which is full of grade ones. I walked into their classroom, sat down quietly next to one of the girls while the Chinese teacher finished her lesson and wiped the tears from my eyes. I looked up to see that the whole grade one class was looking at me wondering why I was crying. This again caused me to lose it yet again. But this time, the students, who had no idea what I was laughing about, just joined in. They didn’t care. Soon the whole class was in hysterics laughing about absolutely nothing. This carried on for quite some time and the Chinese teacher walked out shaking her head as she was the only one hearing herself talk anymore. And there we sat giggling happily for no reason. It was then that it dawned on me, “Ahhhh. This is where I belong. Now these are my kinda people.”

Screw maturity and bring on my baby! Oh the fun we will have.

Week 12

3 Months and all is well.

The scary first trimester is over and we can now afford to be a little less worried about any problems occurring with the pregnancy. People, the Internet and magazines have had me totally freaked out that something would go wrong with the pregnancy. So now I can breathe a sigh of relief.

Jenny is still doing well and is getting less and less tired. She still hasn't told her family that she is pregnant yet but I think she probably will this weekend.

I am stupidly busy. I am working 6 days a week, studying Chinese twice a week and doing rehabilitation for my back five or six days a week depending on how sore I am. I am also trying to start up a business with James, too. So if any of you have $100,000 laying around and want to give it to us, please let me know.

The weather has been horrible the last month. It is the worst "Plum Rain" season we have had since I moved here. It literally has not stopped raining for a week and today it was raining so hard that I couldn't hear my students talk due to the roar of the rainfall on the roof. Typhoon season might be insane this year. My Helly Hanson rain gear has become my favorite possession. I am the only one that shows up for work not drenched and actually enjoy driving in the down pour. Sadly, my ghetto scooter is packing it in and I am going to have to buy a new one soon. Insult to injury, all this rain makes me realize that I am going to have to buy a car to drive Jenny and Baby Danny around in. It terrifies me having my pregnant wife driving a scooter around in this weather.

I really don't want a car but I guess it is a necessity now.

In other news, Jamie and Heather ganged up on me and made me second guess when my mom's birthday is. I swear I have numerical dyslexia. I absolutely cannot remember numbers. I don't even know what my home phone number is. Really. Regardless, every year, I forget the exact date. When I asked Jamie, she used it against me and even corrupted the likes of Heather! Who I thought was beyond such things. Heather Facebooked me and told me her birthday was in July. Which I knew wasn't true. Heather Brass, who has enjoyed "nice-girl immunity" for the last 18 years just painted a huge target on herself. You are going down Brass! Feel the wrath of Danny! I don't get mad. I don't get even. I cross the line.

Here is an example of the line I cross. ________________________________ (me)

As I told Jamie, I am actually a little excited that Heather chose to mess with me because before this, I would have felt guilty playing a practical joke on her.