An ICLP Student Tip: Transportation

* When buying your MRT Easycard, remember to present a student ID to receive the special student rate MRT card. Don't pay adult fare if you don't have to!

* Riding the bullet train (HSR) from Taipei to Kaohsiung takes roughly a little less than 2 hours and costs 1490 NT. The HSR is predominantly filled with grouchy middle-aged men trying to sleep. Once you've taken the HSR, everything else just doesn't cut it. Riding the 自動 train from Kaohsiung back to Taipei, despite it being the fastest regular train, takes 5 hours and costs 845 NT. It is usually full and has all sorts of Taiwanese people riding on board.

* Taipei taxi fare starts at 70 NT.

The Student Lounge

Lately, when walking into the lounge to grab books from my locker, there have been scads of students sitting around tables, books open, chatting away about everything under the sun. I'm not really sure if any studying is actually getting done, but everyone who frequents the lounge could call each other a friend by now. Many of these groups end up planning trips to places like Hualien or Kending over the weekends.

The lounge has a sink, water machine, microwave, mailboxes, daily newspapers, and lockers, which makes it a central hub for everyone.

I spend more of my time in the library, typing these blog entries. Call me a geek. :)

ICLP Lecture #5 - Love Poems

Today, an NTU PhD student who teaches Freshman English at NTU came to show us samples of poems written by her students. I found it interesting just how the sheer "visuality" of Chinese characters lends itself to poetry. Unlike the English language, Chinese poets can utilize the vertical axis just as freely as the horizontal in visually structuring their poems.

The poems reflected a young Taiwanese perspective by the references to pearl milk tea, typhoons, and the internet. Their overall tone was innocent, romantic, and filled with insecurities. What a great way to understand the hearts and minds of the people who surround me on campus, but with whom I never speak a word.

ICLP Library

The ICLP Library is on the 4rth floor. Most students who come to this library use it as a study room rather than an actual library. I don't use any of the floor-to-ceiling books that line the walls, mostly because I really don't have the ability to read them and also because they intimidate me. I have been coming to this library a lot more often lately because 1) I really like the clean, open, and brightly-lit atmosphere and 2) it's convenient for my laptop.


many students like the rare atmosphere of silence found in this library

I had started out in the computer labs, but after a while，the air-conditioning, the whir of 20 computers, and the fortress-like walls of the carols began to get to me. In the library, I still feel like I can stretch out and breathe. Also, I can bring my laptop and plug it into the outlets. I couldn't find outlets in the computer labs and of course I prefer using my own computer to using someone else's.

EDIT: (8/05)
明高 informed me there are outlets embedded in the floor behind each seat in the main computer lab.

A university I attended in Beijing which had just launched its Chinese language program (and of which I was among their first batch of students) put us in a classroom where the wall paint was peeling, the flooring was from the 1950s era, our desks were one row long and made of wood and our chairs were wooden too. The teacher used a traditional slate blackboard and chalk (oh, the nostaligia!) and we came in our winter coats and gloves because the heaters hadn't yet been turned on and winter had already arrived. I don't think universities (especially like that of Tsinghua) have this atmosphere, but I admit, I did love that classroom. Its sparseness made my education feel all the more essential.

The NTU "Creamery"

NTU makes its own ice cream! It is sold in the NTU Farms store, a small "hut" within the food area that's by the Gongguan MRT side of campus. I had the peanut ice cream popsicle as well as the saltine cracker ice cream sandwich.While there, I also found NTU bread, cake, jams, and other agricultural-type products. They also sell NTU branded shirts. Flash your student card and get a teeny discount.

ICLP Writing Classes

Two weeks ago, ICLP posted a sign-up sheet for writing classes on the announcement board. I signed up for it because I'm always game for any activities the program offers its students.

The first class was last Tuesday but I was still too dazed from my whirlwind visa run to the Philippines (the visa problem I mentioned earlier) to remember the class. I was pretty disappointed when I realized I had forgotten about it.  The following week, I certainly did not forget about the class. I got to the classroom at 2 pm today and bumped right into the instructor who was about to shut the door.

"No way! (不行!)" she said sternly before I could even utter a word.

She eyed me for a half a second, "Didn't Miss So-and-so tell you that you can't attend?"

I returned a lost stare.

"If you didn't show up for the first class, you are not allowed to attend this class, sorry." With that, she curtly shut the door.

I can't really think of any other way she could have rejected me out of the class, but really, the rudeness was a little uneccessary. The class had 3 students in total and that empty seat I saw was calling my name! If a student is going to make such an effort to remember the class's location and attend it even after the sign is taken down, couldn't the staff be just a little more friendly in light of such diligence? How much more trouble is it really to have one more body in that empty fourth chair? Especially given that I paid $3000 USD to come here?

The class is a beginner's writing class (i.e. learn the 214 radicals and their meanings) and not an essay writing class as I had originally thought. Not to say that learning the radicals more solidly wouldn't have been helpful! I'm always amazed at how many times I fall back on the radicals when learning or recognizing new characters. A refresher course would have been really good.

Fortunately my classmate IS in the class and will be sharing with me his notes.