Real Life Intrudes: Summer sucks edition


Social life? Posting here?  Who’s got time for that?

In my line of work, teaching ESL, summer is often the busiest. On top of our regular work, we teach summer camp classes. Children are on summer vacation from school, and many parents send them to buxibans all day as “day care”. That often means extra classes and working from morning until night.  Add to that the DIScomfort index these past two weeks has hovered around 40°C.

To quote from the Alan Arkin movie Popi (1969): “You know, when you’re not working, it’s terrible.  And when you’re working.  It’s terrible.”


I am extremely peeved that the Taiwan government spinelessly backtracked and allowed indoor smoking to continue.  But this fight’s not over yet, especially after the Reuters expose on tobacco companies illegally influencing governments, their desperate attempts to keep users addicted and create new ones. The person who ran Taiwan’s Health Promotion Agency in 2016 was forcibly removed for misuse of the office. I suspect the same of the current HPA director.