I started learning how to write and read Chinese about two weeks ago and know 126 characters. I bought a book on ancient Chinese architecture...all in Chinese of course. At first I decided all I wanted it for was for reference material, but after asking about a hundred questions to my Chinese friends about different pages in the book I decided I might as well learn to read Chinese. Surprisingly it is not difficult...just time consuming. My target is 50 characters a week. I'm enjoying learning the history of some of the characters....laugh for example is the bamboo radical over the gentle radical....forming laugh or 'Syau'. The explanation for this is that when you laugh you hold your belly and bend backwards...representing what the Chinese thought to be the movement of bamboo when gently blown by the wind. What's nice about living here in Taiwan and learning Chinese is that my classroom is all around me, it has been fun to see things emerge out of the blur and to finally make sense.... oh yeah that says 'entrance', etc... Literacy here I come. Next languages to learn on the list are Japanese, Russian....plus I'd like to polish up my Portuguese and try my hand at Spanish...but I'm not banking on having the time to achieve all that yet... ;)

Saw the 'new' Wes Anderson movie the other day and was struck by how he manages to create these amazing characters that reflect so much of our own humanity back at us... bizarrely. One of my favorite scenes in the movie has too be the race to get onto the train between Bill Murray and Adrien Brody. It ends with a helpless little shrug by Adrien Brody as Bill Murray disappears into the distance at the end of the platform. Hilarious and sad at the same time. 

So life's still hectic, new additions tend to do this to one's life... compounded by Dylan of course... I don't regret anything though and I am enjoying and loving my children despite the lack of sleep... Getting things done is challenging though... I'm working on a illustration called 'Day at the zoo' and find myself painting up to 1 or 2 in the morning... my bedtime is consistently about 12 pm and I get my rude awakening around about 7 am. Do the math, I'm not sleeping much.

Isn't it strange how, with some people, the best you can get is to only manage to talk past each other. No matter how hard you try to actually connect with the other person... it is just no use, miscommunication tends to be a staple when I talk to some people... sad really. There seems to be a lack of desire to cross boundaries, I worry about how I am being perceived... I know my body language so easily misrepresents what I'm really feeling inside. So... just another frustrating conversation ... beating around the bush of polity and appearances. Perhaps it's my fault, I know I try to hide who I am... I've been scared for far too long. I don't care anymore. This is me. Take it or leave it. There are some who get you, the others... well they may never even want to try. 

If you read this ... thanks for reading.

The year of the RAT...

It has been a very long time since my last post... so much has happened since my last post... My family came to visit us for Christmas... THEN on the 18th of January I witnessed the birth of my daughter, Maya Indigo Maureen Correia... crazy times, crazy times... It is chinese new year today, the year of the rat is upon us, it is going to be a cool year. Anyway with this begin my posts once more...