An Attractive Day

My friend Jon sent me something in which I had to list songs and numbers and peoples names in a supposedly random order but then they were actually supposed to relate to each other. One of the songs supposedly describes your mental state. And the song I had entered was "Hips Don't Lie" by Shakira. I'm all about shaking it, baby!

In other news--I had an afternoon full of attractive men. Mark from Sales picked me up to take me to a singing contest held at one of his client schools. He was dressed in a tastefully hip-hop manner. He has the face of someone who would be arrogant and full of his own hotness, but actually he's shy and sweet. Of course, the fact that my sad Chinese was better than his sad English might have accounted for that. Apparently his favorite thing to do is play pickup basketball. And I taught him that term.

So I get to the singing contest and one of our competitor's has also brought a representative. Yes, this is what I do: smile when thrown as a pawn into PR warfare. Anyway, per usual, today's combatant was a guy who didn't even remember the company he was there representing. So we got along famously and I showed him the ropes of the crazy world of judging high school students as a PR rep. You know, pretending you know what you are talking about, spreading out the scores so that not just one team cleans up, the stock of comments you have to make to the auditorium afterward. etc. Anyway, this guy was a very typically good looking Nordic god, Brad-Pitt-in-his-youth lookalike. So the girls shrieked when he came in, shrieked when he moved, shrieked when looked back. And he's only been in Taiwan for 2 months so he had no clue. He could have babbled in Esperanto and it wouldn't have mattered. All the girls were taking pictures of him behind his back with their cell phones. He rivals Charity for weird, crappy jobs. He once had to count buttons and then, when he got promoted at that factory, he shined policemen's and firemen's badges. that was a nonsequitur. So I basically stuck my tongue out at the little pubescent girls being like, Oh yeah, I'm with *him*...here we are talking, here we are walking in, here we are conferring. eat your hearts out girlies. and I think he might have been gay. or stoned. or both, of course. that kind of guy. hot, gay, stoned. or just a pretty boy surfer. basically, not my type at all.

People, this singing contest was a riot! It was made better by the fact that most of the classes were united in their purpose of performing, so it was like 40 kids enthusiastically dancing and belting out songs. Only a few stragglers on the sides who would have rather been cleaning the bathrooms by hand than stand up there and perform.

First group: the girls were dressed scandalously--for taiwan-- in short green skirts and midriff baring white shirts and all their boobs were way inflated...because they were hiding green bottles in there! why? because their last song was apparently one that Heineken has been using, so they all pretended to drink heineken as they danced to the last song and one of their classmates was actually dressed up as a can of Heineken. See, at bars in Taiwan they have these scantily clad women who skank at bars representing beer companies, and they always have awesome outfits that are coordinated with the colors of their product. i.e. green for Heineken, yellow and blue for Corona, etc. And these little high school girls had rented out beer girl outfits. The boys smartly--you know in that pandering-to-the-fallen-world way-- hid in back and let their scantily clad women do most of the performing. Funny thing is that many of the women didnt embrace their inner Madonna, so they looked like girls who were boredly awkwardly dancing around: not scandalous. The class whore probably thought the theme up and the other girls didn't have the cajones to challenge it. Speaking of whores, new favorite funny Bible verse, Ezekiel 16:35. "Therefore, Oh Whore, hear the word of the Lord!" It's actually in a very solemn and tragic passage, but that verse in itself is hysterical. A solemnly lovely portion though is Ezekiel 16:62-63.

Other highlights: the two groups who danced their pigus off to Roxette's How Do You Do? Clearly chosen because of the subversive lyric "I love the way you undress now, baby begin" which gave them the chance to rip off their outer outfits. Taiwanese students love ripping off their outer garments. Every group had layers of outfits so they could rip them off periodically.

Pronunciation fun from Wednesday: One play title was "Jack and the magic Eggs" well, let's just say Taiwanese students have trouble pronouncing the word "eggs." SO it sounded like Jack and his Magic Ass. All through the play "Jack, how did you invent such special ass? Can I buy one of your magical ass?" Speaking of eggs, something you might not know is how much Taiwanese people love eggs. They do really funky things: drop them in vegetable soup, crack them raw over sizzling food, scramble them with scallions, boil them in tea. Eggs are everywhere and are for all times of day. Now, I even find myself craving them in some form or another.

In honor of my mother, I would like to end with cheese: Have an eggscellent day!