Taiwanese sales clerks and coconut oil

Taiwanese sales clerks are frequently aggressively helpful, which is distressing.  What they don’t realize is they drive me right out of the store; I wonder how many other people are this way?  I wonder how much revenue Taiwanese shops lose driving the introverted out of their stores due to intense sales clerk scrutiny. Shopping for me can be a fun, almost meditative experience where I gaze upon products and ruminate about a future reality in which they are a part of my life.  But because I rarely have much more money than I need, I don’t part with it that easily, and sales clerks make me feel embarrassingly cheap.  I went into a store called Sasa to look at girly foo-foo water and I did get a chance to buy a sample size of a conditioner I was curious about that I saw at Carrefour for half the price.  But Jimmy, my dedicated assistant, ruined my perfume browsing by insisting on spraying the little cards with any scent I expressed interest in.  I wanted to be left alone for 40 minutes to smell each one, but instead I declared the tuberose lovely but did not buy any because it’s $60 a bottle and I don’t make $60 impulse buys very often.

Shin Kong Mitsukoshi in Tainan

What I want to tell the overly zealous shop clerks is to clear out.  I did tell Jimmy I just wanted to look, but that didn’t scrape him off my ass for more than about 45 seconds.  I don’t know how to communicate “please go away; you’re giving me a panic attack” politely.  I went to Uniqlo, a Japanese clothing store I’d never encountered and was blissfully ignored.  I went on to spend the princely sum of $30 US on an accordian pleat grey chiffon skirt and sea foam green top that will undoubtedly make my life more meaningful and love-filled.

Me in my new grey pleated skirt.

Coconut oil update.  If your hair is dry and damaged, get some right now.  Leave it in as long as you can.  But know this– it will leave grease stains on fabric (including what you slept in and your pillow case if you leave it in overnight) so cover your head or just have a designated coconut oil t-shirt.  I’ve been reading about hair because I’m shallow and I like to do research, and if you use silicone products or argan oil, they will coat your hair and prevent the acids and fats of the coconut oil from penetrating.  I do use silicone products, so I washed my hair with one of the shampoos with lauryl sufate that everyone tells you not to use.  But it does get out the silicone.  Then I drenched my hair in coconut oil for about 36 hours (I just put it up in a bun when I went out) and washed it out this morning.  This stuff is amazing.  I will definitely be using it as a deep conditioner a couple of times a month.

Don’t, however, put it on your face in any large quantity.  After an oily, pimply teenhood, I am now blessed with clear, not too dry skin.  But after putting coconut oil on my face, I got like 3 zits.  It will clog your pores.  I’d dab it on to places that get dry to the point of flakiness, but it’s just too heavy for your face.  Even for your body, I would go more lightly next time than I did this.  I took 10 hours to sink into my skin fully and I felt like I was leaving a (admittedly lovely smelling) snail trail behind me.  Now that it has soaked in, my skin is soft and smooth.  I think what I’ll do in the future is have a designated set of coconut oil pjs and just do my coconut oil routine as an over night thing.

I got 2 Chic by Giovanni conditioner with keratin and argan oil and Giovanni’s leave-in conditioner, which promises to be weightless and Giovanni Root 66 volume shampoo.  I will let you know how those work out for me.

Leaving Beigang and quitting a job in a Taiwanese public school

I found a job teaching college and so I will be leaving my teaching job in Beigang/Shuilin and moving to the big city.  I will follow up with a best of Beigang post just so that the handful of people who make it there know where to eat/get their hair washed/find a dance studio.  Basically, I’ll give you the info I wish I had when I got there.

Beigang was nice, but it was difficult living there as a single expat.  There just aren’t many other expats or that much to do.  I also got kicked out of my place.  Here’s what I think happened.

I was supposed to teach ballet classes in exchange for rent, but there was confusion from the start.  I’m a belly dancer, not a ballet dancer; a critical difference.  I did bail on my end of the bargain, and was refused my offers to pay rent.  I did hold up my end in terms of tutoring my land lady’s kids, but she wasn’t that interested in that part.

What really sucks about the above is that finding an apartment in Beigang is this side of impossible.  One pretty gnarly place was trotted out, and that was my only choice.  Thankfully the job in Taichung, where apartments are more plentiful, popped up.  And the apartment I found here is nicer than any I’ve seen in Beigang.

My apartment is cool

Here are two cultural differences that were highlighted in my varied exoduses.

Firstly, the Taiwanese yes. “Yes, you can move in.  Yes, it’s ok that you aren’t a ballerina.  Oh wait, I wasn’t allowed to rent you the space and I thought you were only staying a month.  You have to move out.”  This was the dialogue about my apartment.  I’m still perplexed about who was lying, but someone was in order to save face.  The man who found me the apartment either forgot to tell my then future land lady that I was planning to stay for more than a month (I had 8 months left on my contract) or that I was a teacher at his wife’s school (implying a stay of longer than a month), or my former land lady really did rent me a space she had no authority to rent, which is weird.  I’ll say this; someone was very careless/thoughtless because as previously mentioned, finding apartments in Yunlin county take connections.  I worried that I had offended or been somehow wanting as a tenant.

I heard through the gossip mill (which is prevalent in rural anywhere) that the land lady was pissed about the ballet classes.  Well, I tried to make amends, so life goes on.

My leaving the school was another cultural difference.  To quit, you need to give 30 days.  That’s just a heads up to the five of you reading this.  Your boss has to “let” you quit, which is jarring to an American. My bosses and recruiter (Teach Taiwan) initially told me they could have me deported (they can’t).  Slowly we moved from “We can have you deported” to “We’ll let you go after 3 weeks and you get your full pay, but you won’t get your termination documentation for two weeks, so your new job won’t be able to pay you on time.”  I considered that to be as good as could be expected.

So now to new adventures in Taichung.

The Kaosiang Duck

This thing is everywhere. An artist created a rubber ducky for the Taiwan Strait that was harbored in the Kaosiang Harbor. It’s a clever idea, IMO, until you see the damned duck in every store all the time. The duck was dressed in a cape because this picture was taken with some friends around Halloween time. I saw a duck today with a Santa hat. The duck itself (depending on whom you ask), exploded, deflated, or suffered air pump failure after the last earthquake off the coast of Hualian. It’s one of those ideas that isn’t a bad one, but brevity is the soul of wit, and there ain’t nothing brief about the Taiwanese appreciation for the duck, so I’m ambivalent about it at best.