test-taker

I got my driver's licence 17, yes SEVENTEEN, years ago (!).

I mean, I have been 'driving' since I was much younger than that. I do not quite remember how old I was the first time I actually sat behind the wheel ... and drove I mean ... but back in the day when I was 13 and living a year on Maui again, my dad would let me drive down the long bumpy road to our house in Huelo. It was a dirt road and so full of pot holes I couldn't even drive fast enough to switch to second gear (as far as I remember), but I was driving none the less.

When in high school at Maxwell, me and two of my good friends went and took the written test together, after which I took all of three driving lessons - around Shawnigan Lake (so one stop-sign in the village and that was pretty much it), before taking the actual driving test in Duncan - the first time I ever drove in town.

I barely passed, just a couple demerits short of failing. An example of a mistake was I saw a pedestrian wanting to cross the street that I was going to turn onto, and I stopped before turning, waving him across. He hesitated for a good while before crossing...and it wasn't until I took the turn that I realized he had the red hand and I had a green light. Not sure if I actually got dinged for this, but still. Another mistake was the tester told me to turn left at the next intersection, and then as I failed to move into the left-hand lane (as it was a one-way street...not sure I had noticed that), he told me to never mind, just keep going straight.

Anyhow, my licence expired a couple years after I moved to Taiwan (so about 6 years ago), and so I have been without a car driver's licence since then.

Now that we have kids though, I have left the scooter life behind me for a while ... for the most part ... for communal travelling at least, which is the majority of the travelling I do, and so in order to be able to head out somewhere just me and them (or help with the driving if it is the four of us), I have purchased myself a Taiwanese driver's licence.

"Purchased", you ask?

In a sense, yes, as I have paid for the driving school so that I can pass the test. And the reason I was willing to fork over the 'big' bucks for the classes is the driving test is administered on a special off-road course, with nine different stations you have to make it through:

- the back-into-the-parking-space
- the s-road (drive-forward-and-back-up)
- the parallel parking
- the stop-at-the-railroad-crossing
- the stop-and-start-on-a-hill-without-sliding-back-at-all-or stalling
- the stop-if-it-is-a-red-light traffic light
- the switch-up-to-second-then-third-gear-on-this-short-straight-away
- the stop-for-the-pedestrian-crossing
- the stop-the-car-and-get-out-because-you're-done

I could have just tried to make it on my own, but I think it would be near impossible to make it through without failing as it is one shot for each station, and if you hit the outlines of the parking spots or road you get 16-32 demerits. The s-curved road part is especially hard, as it is quite narrow.

They basically give you a cheat-sheet-method for the entire course.

For example - backing into the parking space: back up until the 'pole' part of the car separating the front and back door windows lines up with that pole outside, then crank the steering wheel all the way to the right and keep an eye on the front right corner of the parking spot in the right door's mirror, then continue backing up until you see the back left corner of the parking space in your left rear-view mirror, then straighten the steering wheel out and continue backing up until the back-line of the parking spot lines up with the handle of the back door.

Each of the 'stations' has this detailed a step-by-step, so that the students are almost guaranteed to pass (as long as they practice enough).

You can choose to take the test on an automatic car or a stick shift...but if you take it on an automatic you are not allowed to drive stick (!).

You have theory classes you have to take (that I skipped and just signed for when I came in to practice driving), as well as practice hours - an hour a day, five days a week, for about 5 weeks or so, where the instructor sits with you some of the time. I went approximately every other day, and for the last few weeks just for about half an hour or so (three or four runs through the course without making an error). You also get three hours of road-driving, which I just did one of. As the DMV will check their records, I was asked to sign that I had come in on all days that I had actually skipped.

Though driving is like riding a bike (you don't forget how to do it) I actually did learn a couple tricks, all for the start-on-a-hill (I used to be a pro on Maui, driving out of Ho'okipa, but never actually learned how to do it from an instructor with official how-to). My instructor had me try two different methods where you don't use the hand break, just for kicks - spicing up his day. One is where you work the break and gas pedals at the same time with one foot, and the other is to just switch my foot from the break to the gas really fast (so the food is never touching both pedals at the same time), while also working the clutch just right. Easy peasy!

Anyhow, the written test is on the computer, so I also did practice tests the last few weeks, before practicing my driving (I took the test in English). I have to say many of the practice questions are hilarious. Some examples.

In any event, I am now the proud owner of a car license here in Taiwan. Woop.


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example practice test questions

Some of the many gems in the English practice booklet for the written part of the driver's test. Note all spelling and punctuation is replicated as shown in booklet:

Knowing human lives are the top priority for drivers, we have to respect the pedestrians whenever we are on the road. Therefore, we have to yield to the elderly, children, and the disabled. T/F   (...but if you're not elderly, a child or disabled you are free game for drivers...?)

Yield and tolerance are the best manifestation of driving morals. T/F

We check our cars thoroughly before we drive. We make sure our cars are in perfect condition. We always watch for pedestrians and other vehicles. That's how we demonstrate our morals. T/F

It is immoral to tab the horn and make noise without second thought. T/F

I saw a vehicle in front overturned. No one helped him. I'm running late. Although I see people injured and yelling for help, I just cannot give them a hand. T/F

The car behind us overtook us just to avoid dusts. I hate dusts, too. That's why I have to overtake the front cars. T/F

I've been driving for many years. I am a skillful driver. That's why I always chat with the others and sing when I drive. That's how I demonstrate my skills and has nothing to do with safety at all. T/F

I've been driving for a long time. I know how danger speeding-up is. Even if passengers ask me to speed up, I just cannot promise them. Also, I will tell them how terrible it is. T/F

When you drive, you are required don't rush any minute and any second; and are required don't neglect any minute and any second. T/F

Those who are mentally retarded, blind, and epilepsy disorder are prohibited from taking driver's license test. T/F

Those who report accident-causing drivers, assist the injured, and drive with outstanding records are eligible for the awards granted by the government. T/F

If drivers find the vehicles on the next lane have turned on direction lights, they are required to speed up in order not to be overtaken. T/F

If drivers find the water temperature meter pointing higher than the ceiling, they must pull the vehicles to the roadsides, pull the manual brake, turn off the engine immediately, and then open the water tank to check the water level. T/F

You must not keep the unnecessary objects in the vehicles. Thus, you can reduce weights for your vehicles, save fuel, save money and, most importantly, protect the environment. T/F

Vehicles are provided with rear mirror and interior mirror: (1) to help drivers expand their visions and keep up with the road situation behind their vehicles, (2) to facilitate drivers using cosmetics, (3) as decorations.

If all tires' pressures are uneven, that is likely to cause: (1) engine knocking, (2) biased driving, (3) nothing.

Which of the following is the most important for drivers: (1) respecting human's lives, (2) speeding up if drivers are in a hurry, (3) watching the scenery all the way to the destination.

Drivers have to abide by laws, because: (1) they don't want to be penalized, (2) they abide by laws for their responsibilities, honors, as well as the safety for themselves and the others, (3) they are under supervision.

If drivers are intending to maintain an orderly traffic for the safety of the entire society and for the happiness of their families, they are required to: (1) abide by driving morals and disciplines, (2) improve their driving skills, (3) not smoke and not drink, either.

When driving in a long tunnel, drivers throw objects, cigarette or flammable items out of the vehicles: (1) is an extremely immoral and dangerous conduct, (2) is not a problem as long as drivers are happy to do that, (3) is the best way to keep their vehicles clean.


I love Taiwan.


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playmates

Leona has never had any 'fixed' friends. Kind of embarrassing to admit it actually, feel like it sounds like we have neglected her in some important way.

However, here in Taiwan we walk to the elementary school every afternoon. There all the (few) kids that don't go to cram school hang out and play after school, or have their baseball practice, and many grandparents bring their non-schoolaged grandchildren to play as well (and then there are the excersisers that walk/run around the track).

After having gone there daily for the past month and a half, she has now built herself a little network of friends - interestingly enough not kids her own age but rather elementary school kids. I think the kids both like Leona, as well as hanging out and playing and talking with Judge.

There is one girl, a 3rd grader called 巧柔 (Qiao-Rou), that takes especially good care of her (sorry for crap quality of pictures ... haven't bought my new smart-phone yet):

[The girl hanging upside down]

 

 

What a sweetheart.

 

 

 

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april fools!

So, this is a bit anti-climatic, after the whole 'drumroll please' bit. The fine print in our plan (that it was open for changes) was excluded from the post, but has, surprise surprise, come into effect. I think I should just stick to the ColesNotes version and vow to never write about plans again.

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ColesNotes

• Judge is actively looking for and applying for jobs anywhere in Norway.
• Our planned arrival date is in the beginning of February 2014.
• If he doesn't land a job before we arrive, we will live in Innvik again until he is an official part of Norway's workforce.
• I will build my editing business to supplement our income - once my maternity leave is finished in the beginning of April.

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This has nothing to do with Taiwan, per se. I mean, personally I like Taiwan more than Norway in many respects...but not when taking where we're currently at in our lives (family with young children and practically zero capital) into consideration.

It is just that after some serious soul-searching and discovery of some perhaps a bit difficult truths this past month - that going into the business would be for the wrong reasons, and the passion for it is not there but rather in other areas making him not the right person for the job, especially taking into consideration our core values (the quality and quantity of our family time), we decided it is more right for us to head back to the land of milk and honey before he loses his joining family resident visa and we waste too much time and savings not advancing towards our current main goals (a self-owned home, time to pursue our passions, and most importantly time with the kids).

That gives us only three more months here. Wow.



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my tandum-nursing adventures

Ever since forever Leona has been super attached to nursing. And with super attached I mean like super. It wasn't until I was a few months pregnant (and she was around 1.5 years old) that she stopped nursing 2-3 times during the night (ok, ok, that was my fault as I didn't cut her off, so her stomach was used to getting nutrition during the night and thus she would wake up hungry and want to nurse). I think she stopped mainly because my milk supply seriously diminished, as is common when you're pregnant, and so her stomach got used to not getting anything in it and thus eventually learned not to be hungry during those hours.

She totally didn't start to dislike the changed taste of the milk (due to pregnancy) either, but boy was she happy when my milk came in again a few weeks before Eliana was born. I remember her reaction: Surprised look, signed milk, then de-latched, looked at me, nodded emphatically while saying, also emphatically, 'Gooooood!'.

The plan to help her in the transition of Eliana being born was that she would be allowed to nurse as often as she wanted in the beginning. Thus, when she arrived at the hospital the morning after Eliana was born, and Eliana nursed, she climbed onto the bed and wanted to nurse too. And there I was, tandem nursing for the first time.

I have to admit it was a bit much for me sometimes, so I would have to ask her to wait once in a while until after Eliana was finished (I of course made sure Eliana got all the colostrum she needed, and a balance of for- and hind-milk, etc.). I was literally nursing her more than Eliana, both in terms of the number of nursings per day as well as in the volume of each nurse (because her stomach is a lot larger than Eliana's).

One of the greatest benefits of Leona's fondness (obsession?) with nursing I guess is that Eliana has always had way more than enough milk.

After a few weeks though, I had to start cutting down on the number of Leona's nursings, because it was just too much - and I think it became almost a negative, a stress, for her (and me), because it had gotten to where she never knew when she asked to nurse if she would get to or if she would get rejected. And being rejected about something like this when you are in a sensitive transitional state is not good for the heart. And she would really ask all the time, when we were out and about, when we were in the car, when Eliana got to nurse, when she felt stressed I guess (which was often with all the changes).

So I told her the new system, and tried to be consistent, and we quickly got back to only 5-6 nursings per day, then back to 4-5 (before and after sleeps).

Though we had a fall-back when we first got back to Taiwan, because she got sick (first time she's been sick in her whole life, excluding the three-day roseola incident when she was 10 months old or so, and I let her nurse as much as she asked (to give her my antibodies as I had just been sick too), and so it got her all out of balance again.

Anyhow, now she seldom asks to nurse outside of the designated times or when Eliana is nursing, making it a lot easier on both of us I think. And it is now only before the evening sleep and sometimes in the morning that they actually tandem nurse - and man are they sweet when they do! They will look at each other and hold hands and all that goodness.

Eliana of course gets to nurse wherever and whenever she wants, which gives a lot of positive responses from 'grandparents' that are out at the parks either with their grandchildren or exercising. I am of course as discreet as I can be, with a nursing top and all, but they will often come over and comment and say breast milk is the best for the baby and that it is great that I am breastfeeding her. Pretty sweet actually.

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corporal punishment

The other day I was sitting in the living room when I suddenly heard a kid get yelled at, a smack, and then him crying. I started to feel ill. It continued. "Sit down!" smack smack. "Don't hit me, don't hit me" the kid whimpered. Smack. "Sit down I said!" Sudden strong defiance in his voice: "NO!" Then sobbing (remorse for such defiance?): "I'm sorry...I'm sooorry...". Smack.

By now I'm physically ill. And yet, there is nothing I can do, making me feel even worse.

Corporal punishment is still strong here - not as strong as before perhaps, but still super common, almost universal it seems. All to different degrees, and there are some families that go against the mainstream and have a no-hitting, no corporal punishment, philosophy.

Most most common there's corporal punishment and shaming. It seems they go hand in hand.

Interestingly enough, it doesn't always make me feel sick like this, and I never thought I would not cringe when it was being delivered.

But - the elementary school's baseball coach has a rod, and he uses it on the boys for every missed ball they make during most drills (whacks them across the butt). But the boys don't seem phased by it at all - they trot over to the coach and line up for the smack, sometimes flinch a bit and sometimes not, the smile or grin often not leaving their face (if they have one at the time) and then off they trot to get back in line for the drill. The coach is super strict, both yelling at them and with the rod, but there is no anger, fear or rebellion towards him, it seems they respect him despite it....not because of it...I mean, I think they would respect him without it as well (?). But it is the way they do it.


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little miss chatter-box

Leona is in a full on language explosion. But since it's four languages at once, she has them all jumbled together (as is expected) - though she is surprisingly (?) adept at using the majority of the right language with the right people, e.g., mostly Norwegian with my mom, mostly Mandarin with Judge's mom, etc.

It is only recently, however, that she has started to talk with other kids at the playground...it's just that she can't express herself fully in even the combined languages, let alone just in Mandarin, so she just kind of chatters away with Mandarin sounds, slipping in some key words here and there, as well as a lot of body language complete with pointing and gesticulating.

An example is when she is telling a kid coming up behind her when she's sitting at the top of a slide to go slide down the other one (she tends to just sit and sit and sit at the top of slides), or when she's trying to organize a couple of kids on the teeter-horses, to make sure they don't go on the one she's going to go on, etc.

She does something similar at Judge's grandma's house when she is talking with the relatives there. They understand almost none of it, but if they ask her a question she can often answer now in Mandarin, often surprising me with new words I have never heard her speak before.

She is seriously cute!

A current gem: Backisle (bicycle)

She has also started to:

• drop the 't' on some words, sometimes. Like 'move' is not always 'moot' anymore.
• say 'I' in very few circumstances: "I wanna..." - while most of the time she still uses Noona or Oona.
• say Liana and Eliana (rather than just Ana), and Eona and Leona, but not super often yet.

And her sentences are getting soooooo long (4-5 constructs strung together)!

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effort proud

We have made a concious choice to focus on effort rather than result, or rather effort and being specific about the results, with the girls, saying "You are working so hard!" when they are making a lot of effort to do something, and saying "You got up all by yourself" if that is what for example Leona did.

(vs. the generic 'Good job!')

When Eliana is struggling on her stomach after getting there by herself (we haven't given her tummy-time, so now that she has started to roll onto her stomach she is exploring and eventually struggling with the new experience) and Leona heads over to her to help her, we encourage her to not interrupt Eliana by saying "Eliana is on her stomach, she is working so hard."

Yesterday, for the first time, Leona said the following when she was trying to swing on her own (something she has just started trying to do the last couple days):

"Noona working so hard."

My heart soared a little (ok, a lot) - How cool is that! Acknowledging her own effort. 

This is in stark contrast to what we often hear and see out and about, like the girl about her age who climbed up the slide at the park today, and when she got to the top she clapped her hands and said the equivalent of "Good job!" (好棒啊!).



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4 months old

This is the face of our four month old:

Seriously cute! She is amazingly happy and content, making people feel so successful because she will readily smile at them. There was even a lady at the school we go to every afternoon to play at (and where a lot of adults go to to walk/run laps and do their 'special' exercises) who had her daughter (around 30 years old) come with her yesterday just so she could interact with Eliana.

 

Eliana coos, babbles, gurgles, giggles and screeches, rolls to her stomach, chases after toys on the floor (pivots in circles on her back and scoots around...often in the flash of a turn-around-for-a-second-turn-back-and-she's-moved, can keep herself occupied for long periods of time, and has found a rhythm with me when it comes to ECing.

 

Leona is suber sweet with her, sharing toys with her, playing with her, wanting to hold and kiss her, take baths with her, talk with her.

 

These girls are quite different, which is fun and exciting. I am very thankful Leona is the older sister, as her first several months were pretty rough as she was very often restless, uncomfortable, and/or crying (=screaming). I think it would be a lot harder on the older sibling if the younger one needed as much focus as Leona required...would be a lot harder on me as well.

Eliana gets to take a lot of her naps outside now, since the weather has turned down the heat a tiny bit and we can be outside at parks a lot more.

 

[Who wouldn't love to fall asleep to this view]

And while the little one sleeps, the older one plays:

[Leona making friends]

[Our big girl]

 

 

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