kids humor

Teacher: How old is your father?
Kid: He is 6 years.
Teacher: What? How is this possible?
Kid: He became father only when I was born.

Logic!! 👌😀
Children are quick and always speak their minds. 
_______________________________
Teacher: Maria, go to the map and find North America.
Maria: Here it is.
Teacher: Correct. Now class, who discovered America?
Class: Maria.
_______________________________
Teacher: Johnny, why are you doing your math multiplication on the floor?
Johnny: You told me to do it without using the tables.
_______________________________
Teacher: Glenn, how do you spell 'crocodile?'
Glenn: K-R-O-K-O-D-I-A-L
Teacher: No, that's wrong.
Glenn: Maybe it is wrong, but you asked me how I spell it.
_______________________________
Teacher: Donald, what is the chemical formula for water?
Donald: H I J K L M N O.
Teacher: What are you talking about?
Donald: Yesterday you said it's H to O.
_______________________________
Teacher: Tom, why do you always get so dirty?
Tom: Well, I'm a lot closer to the ground than you are.
_______________________________
Teacher: Clyde, your composition on 'My Dog' is exactly the same as your brother's... Did you copy his?
Clyde: No sir. It's the same dog.
_______________________________
Teacher: What are you drawing, Lucy?
Lucy: A picture of God.
Teacher: Oh honey, nobody really knows what God looks like.
Lucy: They will in a minute.
_______________________________
Teacher: Now, Simon, tell me frankly, do you say prayers before eating?
Simon: No sir, I don't have to, my Mom is a good cook.

Happy summer 😀

san francisco–monterey

My friend Brian is a cyclist, who, along with a couple fellow cycling enthusiasts, have been riding up and down Southern California for the past 10+ years, traversing between San Diego and Santa Barbara many times over. Having done that, they set their eyes on the California coastline and decided to extend their bicycle reach all the way to San Francisco, one tour at a time.

They were near reaching that goal after successfully completing two major tours in recent years: one between Santa Barbara and Cambria, the other between Cambria and Monterey.

All that was left was a ride between Monterey and San Francisco.

For such an effort to be successful, they need some logistic help: someone to drive with them (and their bicycles) to the starting point and drop them off, then continue to drive to the destination point to pick them up at the end of their ride, so they won't have to ride the same way back to the starting point which would be too exhausting and time consuming for these weekend warriors who need to report back to work the next day.

They had found their driving help, booked the hotel/motel rooms, done the training, etc., when at the last minute their designated driving help had a family emergency and could not make it. They were disappointed and about to cancel the trip when Brian called me and asked if I could be that driving help instead, and I said yes.

So on the Memorial Weekend last week, all four of us–Brian, his two cyclist friends, I–and three road bikes hopped on a Subaru SUV and drove all the way to a little town a couple miles north of San Francisco and started our two-day, 140-mile coastline tour to Monterey.

The plan was simple: While they rode their bikes on the bike paths, which mostly paralleled Pacific Coast Highway (State Route 1), I drove the car on PCH, might stop by anywhere anytime I wanted, as long as I met them at designated lunch stops (Burger Kings, for lack of In-N-Out Burgers which were our favorite in those areas) and hotel check-in and the final destination of their ride the second day.

So here were what a free roaming soul like myself encountered along a beautiful stretch of Golden State coastline on a sunny Memorial Weekend:

I saw:

cliffy beach

​sandy beach

​tide pools beach

​lost pier beach

​busy beach

​lighthouse

​bridge

​wind/kite surfing

I walked on:

wide berm trail

narrow rocky trail

​marshland trail

​railroad track

​At the city of Santa Cruz, where we stayed for the night, I visited the historical Santa Cruz Mission in the morning, a much humbler version of the world famous San Juan Capistrano Mission in my hometown, but a quieter (I was the single visitor there) and closer setting that allowed me to study the artifacts better.

 
​​
I also took a bench seat at the little fountain garden outside the Cathedral to have a read of a short story from the book I brought with me.

I met and picked up my three amigo cyclists at a McDonald's outside the Fisherman's Wharf in Monterey as planned and we headed home from there. Mission accomplished, we were all happy and chatty. Brian had been my long time friend, but Jason and Liming were no total strangers either. I had ridden with them a couple times before, and both were from Taiwan and of IT backgrounds. We exchanged our life stories and cracked jokes from time to time. What stood out most about them for me was their enthusiasm for the outdoors: Besides cycling, Jason was a seasoned angler, Liming a camper, and both were training (they purposely slept on the floors of the motel/hotel rooms we stayed) for a multi-day backpacking trip in deep Yosemite mountains they planned to take in the coming summer.

But I would be amiss if I did not mention the athleticism and positivity of my dear friend Brian, who–imagine that–was on a hospital bed due to a stroke he suffered just a little more than a year ago! Through grit and tenacity, regimented diet and exercises, he had regained full health and enjoyed the challenge and fun of this long ride just like Jason and Liming did! What a comeback story, what an awesome inspiration for us all!!

new york, new york

Michael Lin and I were high school buddies and went to the same university/department in Taiwan then came to the States the same year some 40 years ago. He ended up settling in NoCal while I in SoCal. My wife and I were looking forward to attending the wedding reception in October for his daughter whom we had watched growing up as a little girl when he called and suggested we go to New York City this month where his daughter and her fiance resided for the "real thing"–the official ceremony and celebration with only a few close friends and parents of the bride and the groom–and some touring and time together in the City... A trip of purpose and pleasure, I thought... and, why not! So off we went!

This was my third visit to the Big Apple, the first two being one or two-day stop-by's that merely counted, while this time I spent six days and seven nights

Having a variety of ethnic foods, Chinese (dumplings), Japanese (ramen), French (sandwiches), Italian (veal), Latin (fusion), and world famous New York pizza, all so authentically delicious, at surprisingly reasonable prices.

​​Going to a Broadway show, Lion King, not so much for the storyline or dialogues, but the theatrical fanfare and acrobatic acting and dancing, singing and costuming.

Watching sunset on East River shore, shimmering sunlight on the river, Manhattan skyscrapers silhouetting in the back.

​Lying on the immaculately maintained spongy grass of the city park, at day and at night, blue skies or shiny city lights above.

Witnessing a wedding on a rooftop, watching the city as the city watched back, two fine young man and woman pledged and hailed their new life together.

​And taking the subway to and fro like veteran New Yorkers do every day.

You realized this was indeed a city that never slept when you saw the nightly crowds flooding Times Square, a town where "everything's happening" with scaffoldings everywhere and construction machinery humming and heaving all day long...

Yet when I visited the city library, I was struck by its palace-like decorations and the generous donations it received from many, showing great respect for learning and knowledge. As I looked up from the little but ecologically friendly zoo inside Central Park and saw a giant spider mock-up crawling on a wooden pole against the concrete high rises outside and blue skies above, I chuckled and marveled at this perfect blend of nature and civilization the city was.

​​Lastly, but not least, spending a whole week meeting and bantering and playing ping pong and billiard balls like we used to do as teen-agers with an old friend that went back half a century, watching his lovely daughter holding a rabbit doll she once forgot in our house when she's little, becoming a mature, beautiful, soon-to-be eye-doctor wife of another promising young man, the soul mate of her life... surely these were things worthy of taking a twenty-five hundred mile trip for!

 

vasily grossman

"Human history is not the battle of good struggling to overcome evil. It is a battle fought by a great evil struggling to crush a small kernel of human kindness. But if what is human in human beings has not been destroyed even now, then evil will never conquer."
— “Life and Fate”, Vasily Grossman

"Humanity is fundamentally good", that is probably one basic tenet many secular humanists hold. But how does an atheistic world keep this flickering flame of good from going out without help from an almighty God, Existentialist philosophers and do-gooders, besides pointing out the absurdity of human existence and suggesting "do good for goodness' sake", don't seem to have other exciting ideas or survival guides to offer. In contrast, Vasily Grossman, a Russian Jew whose mother was murdered by the Nazis and who himself had endured the tyranny of Stalin Soviets and the horror of siege warfare with the invading Germans during World War II, held this simple belief that "as long as some little act of kindness can be found somewhere in the world, humanity prevails." That's a heartening thought!

Flip the coin to the other side: Even God-believers have many hard times struggling between doing good and doing evil. Just look at these exemplar characters in the Bible: King David, God's beloved, committing heinous crimes such as adultery and murder; St. Paul crying out "What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body that is subject to death!"; and Job, a "righteous man", bickering with God about the many "unfair" treatments he's been dealt... All indicating that spiritual living in a rough-and-tumble world is not one super battle where a victory is claimed and then smooth sailing all the way, but more likely a long and winding journey where God is often heard saying, "I have heard your suffering, now go suffer!"

I am one who believes Truth is not exclusively written in the Bible, but exists all around the world and within human hearts for all to see and feel. That is why when I read that passage by Vasily Grossman–an apparent non-believer–I was elated: Yeah, good triumphs over evil, darkness yields to light, isn't that the simple, universal truth we knew all along since we were kids?!

There is vast unknown in the subconscious/unconscious mind of humans, psychologists/human rationalists agree. Could conscience, or the ultimate good of humanity, be one elusive, precious unknown that deserves and demands persistent pursuit by a humanist, in the same manner a believer goes after the Holy Spirit hidden in him/her, with piety?

"God took seeds from other worlds and saved them on this earth, and raised up his garden; and everything that could sprout sprouted, but it lives and grows only through its sense of being in touch with other mysterious worlds; if this sense is weakened or destroyed in you, that which has grown up in you dies. Then you become indifferent to life, and even come to hate it."
— "The Brothers Karamazov", Fyodor Dostoevsky

tales from taiwan (2)

g0v
Pronounced "gov zero, 零時政府", it is a grass-root civic tech community that promotes transparency of government information and citizen society through open source information technology that I committed my support to starting last year. Though I missed their annual banquet for donors due to my quarantine restriction, I visited their workgroup meetings and invited them to lunches, collectively and individually, to encourage and appreciate what they did.

An offshoot project from g0v, Cofacts/真的假的, is a fact-checking website and mobile app that I also supported last year. Johnson and Billion, young man and young woman in their early 30's, are cofounder/coder and promoter of the project since its inception five years ago. I went to one of their regular seminars aiming at tutoring and recruiting volunteer fact-checkers for the project and was impressed by how organized and well conducted the session was and how persistent they'd been doing this for years on volunteer basis. I continued my donation to the project and took them to a steakhouse for a treat.

Keep up the good work, doers of the world!

Still rocking
JK Yao was my junior high school buddy who loved rock 'n' roll music since we were kids. He started singing them at restaurant lounges in his early 20's, won top talent prize on TV with his guitar duet, composed and published his own songs, and has been producing and hosting an "oldies but goodies" rock music radio program broadcast every Saturday evening since two years ago, after semi-retiring from his own award winning lighting design company.

He gathered some of his old band members to have a series of public performances at a musical cafe recently. We went to the first show, it was a full house, packed with fans who enjoyed his radio program and old time rock 'n' roll music like I do. Here's his rendition of Don McLean's "American Pie" I recorded at the concert:
https://photos.app.goo.gl/Y8bzn85DR4kyjW8m8

Singing through that 9-minute long classic without missing a beat on the lyric, my hat off to him!

​A girl from Seattle
Doris Brougham (彭蒙惠) decided she wanted to share the Gospel with Chinese people when she heard millions of them had never heard of Jesus at twelve. In 1948, at age 22, she left her hometown Seattle by freighter for China, where she learned Chinese, taught English, and helped with Christian missions. She moved to Taiwan in 1951 in the aftermath of the Chinese Civil War and continued her evangelical work by helping tribal people groups, setting up children's choirs, organizing youth camps, teaching English classes, and hosting an international radio program broadcasting to mainland China. In 1962 she founded Overseas Radio and Television Inc. (ORTV), along with Studio Classroom (空中英語教室), an English language-teaching radio program. She was also involved in producing Taiwan’s first Christian TV program, Heavenly Melodies (天韻歌聲), formed of ORTV staff, which aired in 1963. 

She is 95 years old this year. To celebrate her birthday and commemorate her life-long achievements, a musical was created and performed by ORTV staff and some theatrical professionals from the outside. We were invited to the show by our friends Daniel and Andrea Bastke, a missionary family we acquainted with in Southern California who moved to work for ORTV a couple years ago, who also played parts (Daniel as Doris' dad, Andrea her mom, and their daughter Selah as young Doris) in the show. We were thoroughly entertained and touched by the singing, acting, dancing, and the stories of this extraordinary girl from Seattle!

​​

To fetch a stamp
When receiving a registered mail in Taiwan, one needs to press a personal stamp on some paperwork as a show of ID and proof of reception. So when the postman rang my bell one morning and told me there was a registered mail for me I went downstairs with my personal stamp and gave it to the postman standing at the front door to press it on his paperwork. He then handed it back to me, and–lo and behold–I dropped it...  It hopped on the ground a couple times then fell through the opening of a railed cover right next to the front door steps and landed on the bottom of the drain ditch.

​After a two-second pause in shock, the postman apologized profusely to me (for an accident I thought I was at least half at fault) and started thinking how we could retrieve it. An older gentleman across the street who witnessed the whole thing suggested he had all kinds of tools that we could use, but the hard thing was to open up the railed cover–one side of it was wedged between the ground and the doorstep that the best we could do with a crowbar was a tilted opening that only I, with the smallest arm around, could enter, and even then I needed to hold an extension tool to try to reach that stamp. I grabbed a ladle, a back scratch from my apartment and taped them together and with it I could reach the stamp, but without gripping claws at the end of the ladle it could only move the stamp around, not picking it up. A lady neighbor gave me a long pinch that could grab, but not long enough to reach the stamp... We were in a quandary.

​"How about using a vacuum cleaner?" the postman said. I thought that was a far-fetched idea, with electrical wiring and hoses and suction etc. in an open and raw environment like this. But my sister's studio assistant quickly pulled out their vacuum machine and hooked it all up for me. So I thought why not give it a try and laid myself down on the ground again, pulled the hose through the opening with my arm, located the stamp with the nose of the nuzzle, hooded over it, then turned on the switch... Voila, it got sucked right into the bag in one loud click!

Everyone was elated, and I thanked them, the postman, my sister's assistant, the neighbors whom I barely knew but came out to volunteer their help so generously and passionately, a show of the tenacious "human kindred feel" (人情味) that Taiwanese people are well known for that I personally experienced in this unusual rescue operation right at my front door!  

tales from taiwan (1)

November 1, 2021 – March 4, 2022

Have no car, will travel
Public transportation is so easy, touring programs so abundant, there is no excuse not going places over the island. So we tagged on a bus tour to a southwestern town showcasing an old time sawmill with modern woodcraft, visiting tea farms, a coffee factory, and a natural eco park along the way;​

a self-planned (by a friend couple), self driven (by the friend couple) car trip to the big sky, blue ocean east coast and a deep river, silk stream fall, suspension bridge national park; 

​and a high speed train facilitated expedition to an erstwhile earthquake shaken town that features a "paper church", a Buddhist pyramid, and a village wall gallery right at the geographical center of Taiwan.

​Michelin and A-Cheng

Though restaurant business got hammered hard at the height of the pandemic (many "little eat" stands catering to tourists went out of business), the majority survived and thrived. From Michelin rated gourmet restaurants to corner soybean-milk and beef-noodle shops, to run-of-the-mill indigenous food providers such as Formosa Chang (鬍鬚張) and A-Cheng Geese (阿城鵝肉), crowds were as prevalent as ever, proving good foods and good dining are delights of life, perhaps even more so at hard times.
 

​​​Buggy jiang

She is the 6-year old granddaughter ("Buggy" because her ultrasound photo looked like a little bug in her mom's womb, "jiang" meaning "kiddo" in Japanese) of my sister's, a normal, happy kid of her age. She went to the kindergarten in the morning, got picked up by her mom in the afternoon and sent straight to my sister's piano studio for some very light-hearted, "happy-hour" lessons with her granny. She occasionally came up to our apartment (we lived in the same building as my sister's and my nephew's) with her mom and showed us the dancing and singing she learned at school, or had me print out some pictures for her to draw after. She was a joy to many. And when one weekend we took her to a newly opened playground in a neighborhood park for play, I was somehow struck by the rare scene of the many bubbly, bouncy kids all around, in a country that has been breaking world records for lowest birth rates for years.
 

And they wedded
My wife's favorite niece and her boyfriend had been going steady for years, and after some prompting and hinting, and finally overt incentive (bribe) from my wife, they decided to get married.

The wedding took place at a hotel ballroom. We arrived early to witness the "pre-game shows" of pranks and teases by their friends, and when it came to the part where the bride's parents formally said farewell to the daughter, the mother lost it, bursting out in tears while giving words of advice such as "don't over-sleep" to her daughter that were both touching and funny at the same time, totally unscripted.

The ceremony went smoothly afterwards: the processional, the announcement, the toasting... all on tack. The food was great, the atmosphere joyful, the newlyweds handsome and beautiful. Mission accomplished, I imagined my wife would say.

Will they have children? That would be the next question.

 

Where I have never trekked before

My father, during his time on Earth, took the habit of waking up at 3:30 in the morning and hiked to a nearby mount for over 40 years, until the year he passed. I decided to take the same hike myself, and asked my cousin Chris, whose father also passed away a few years ago and was the closest brother to my father who also went the same hike for some period of time with my father, to join me.

For four consecutive weeks, Chris and I not only went the same hiking route as our fathers did, but also explored adjacent mounts one at a time, all the way to the eastern end of Taipei basin. I was satisfied, not only by the discovery of new hiking routes, but also by the feeling of rekindled kinship with my cousin brother from childhood.