At one time or another, everyone gets interrupted while speaking. This is an annoyance that we must put up with in a free society. Sometimes, people cannot hear you and they mistakenly start to speak over you because they didn’t hear you. This, I can understand. But, there is another type of interruption that I simply cannot tolerate.
My very first Taiwanese friend was Mr. Chen Shao Yeou. Mr. Chen worked in a Chinese restaurant in the town where I lived at the time. I met him while working in the restaurant as one of the food preparation chefs.
We lived together in a big house for the workers. This is where I first began to learn Chinese, by associating with speakers of the language in close quarters. Over time I helped quite a few restaurant workers improve their English vocabulary too. One fellow asked me to read the entire contents of his English study book into a boom box cassette recorder so he would have a native speaker reference to listen to. It was nothing more than simply reading columns of words and it took about 30 minutes. Well worth it.
My father was known at “Mr. Fixit” because he could fix just about anything. When my family first moved into our new Florida home in 1959, my father went about building things. First he boxed in the ugly heating oil tank that was hung from the ceiling in the garage. He then made a storage area below it. That wasn’t enough so he built a full length 
counter in the garage, and provided us with a lot of storage space. Then he walled off the garage about ¼ way from the entrance and built himself an electronics workshop. Building things came naturally to my father and I’m happy to say that I have inherited his ability. So when I brought home the discarded remains of a wooden go-kart from down the street, my father went to work on a plan to rebuild it.
My father and I together in 2006 (age 83)
Yes, that time of year is upon us again - the season of colds and flu. These maladies are causes by viruses and therefore cannot be successfully treated with antibiotics. But, there are things you can to to reduce the symptoms and feel better while your body rages the war on foreign invaders. Normally I try to avoid using medications as much as possible.
It brings me great pleasure to introduce this new series on TheNHBushman.com - Stories From My Past. I’ve been wanting to do this for some time as I frequently tell stories of growing up as a child or young adult to my family and friends who urge me to write about them. So, this is the first attempt at doing so, with this first articled entitled, The Trick.
I grew up in St. Petersburg, Florida, the eldest of 4 children. Behind me is sister Janet, followed by sister Nancy, and then brother John. Naturally being the eldest sometimes made me a target as the other children felt it necessary to “take me down” from time to time. Often that involved some kind of a trick that would point blame, and therefore The Wrath of Mother down upon me. Kids are always playing these kinds of tricks on each other, and this has not changed over thousands of years. Our family was no different, at least in that regard.
Photos by MJ Klein
UPDATE: Late in the afternoon, the neighbor’s dog got away from him, and the dog ran after a passing motor scooter, forcing the female driver to stop (I wouldn’t have - I would have run him over). I was there of course, with my camera, and I captured a very revealing set of photos presented at the bottom of this article. The shots of the neighbor chasing the dog with a stick are priceless!
Every morning my wife and I are woken up by our neighbor’s dog barking across the street. This has been going on since we first moved here, so I assume that it’s been like this forever. Hui-chen’s mother visited us on one occasion and the neighbors asked her “Why don’t they like dogs?” referring to Hui-chen and I. The reason for the question is because we frequently yell out of the window for the dog to shut up. Apparently why we yell at their dog is a connection that wasn’t made by the owners. We’re supposed to love his dog as much as he does (which isn’t saying much).
Our neighbor shares a laugh with the police - it’s all just great fun!
Readers of ex-pat blogs notice that we tend to complain about a lot of things. I certainly have my share of gripe posts on our blog. Heck, I’ve even based an entire series around complaining, called Sound Off! But, it’s very important for our readers to understand just how much I love Taiwan, and admire the Taiwanese people. So much so, that I’m making a list:
A few things have come up in the blogosphere today that are worth mentioning. I’ve been saying for some time now that “blogging” these days, is anything but. It appears that others are also coming around to this idea too as there are more and more articles talking about the content of blogging.
Today, ProBlogger had an article called “What Do You Miss About The ‘Good old Days of Blogging’?” I left a lengthy comment:
I’ve been thinking about whether or not I should write this article. I’ve never written anything quite so personal before. But recently, someone whom I know has been experiencing problems that might be attributed to artificial sweeteners, so I’ve decided that if this article helps one single person, then it was worth it. So please read it an see if anything I say about artificial sweeteners might ring true in your life. This is not a sympathy article, so please don’t feel any obligation to comment on it. I am quite alright these days.
This is an actual personal experience that I had between 1988 and 1993 (and beyond)
David tagged me. I’ve been dreading this moment. I’m not sure if anyone is interested in these little/un/known facts about me, but here goes:
I don’t think I’m going to tag anyone. I did enjoy reading some of these types of facts that were presented by the other bloggers. Maybe we should be doing interviews instead of fact listing?
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