kaohsiung (gaoshung)
    I'm in a grumpy mood tonight so let us burst forth with negativity.
    1. If you're going to romanize Mandarin, what possible point is there in assigning the incorrect letter to the Mandarin sound? Many places in Taiwan you can do OK with despite the bad romanization, with I've had a bad string the last few days. It was impossible to get a train ticket to Taitung (they would only sell me one to Taichung, on the other side of the island) until I found that it is pronounced Taidong. So why the hell do they write 'Taitung' all over the town?! Kaohsiung I already knew about, but explain this: they locals call it Gaoshung. So why put a 'k' when there's a 'g', and why is the 'h' before the 's' when they say 'shung', not 'hsung', whatever that is. And toss that 'i'! All I can figure is that it was invented by people who use a Roman alphabet but pronounce 'k' as 'g', 't' as 'd', 'o' as 'u', 's' as 'sh', 'hs' as 'sh', 'hsi' as 'sh' etc etc... (1)
    2. To continue my complaints about the Taiwanese, every day I get more and more surprised about the paucity of English. I would like to try to give the Taiwanese credit and say that many of them are bilingual in Mandarin and Taiwanese, or Mandarin and something else, but you'd think someone somewhere would speak English! It's not Dutch or Gujarati we're talking about. Today I tried to take a bus to the train station. I asked the people waiting for the bus if it went to the train station. I asked in Mandarin. They all ignored me. I then asked the bus driver. He just shrugged. So I asked the people on the bus. There were about twenty of them, ranging in age from about thirteen to ninety. I asked in Mandarin, which I admit I am poor in, and then in English. They all just shrugged and some laughed. I even made a train sound. Just blank stares. Man, I can say train station in six or seven languages off the top of my head and I'm no genius. What's with these people?
    Later in the day I had to find a street called "Guang Fu". I asked the bus driver. He shrugged and looked uninterested. I asked people on the bus. I asked people on the street. I went into hotels and asked the front desks- they had no idea. Most people just turned away when I asked them. One girl even hid her face when I asked and cowered in a corner. When I finally found the street, it was TWO BLOCKS away from the people I had been asking. How stupid are these people?! Sybille said it was because I "maybe had the tones wrong". Look, I tried all the tones! I said Guang1 Fu3, Guang4 Fu2, Guang2 Fu4, every combination I could think of. Everyone either ignored me, looked terrified, or yelled at me in Mandarin and walked off. Even at the hotel TWO BLOCKS from this street they dug out a map and just shrugged, saying they couldn't find it. And when I got there it was a fairly large street- not a lane or unmarked alley, but a regular street marked 'Guang Fu'. In fact there were THREE streets named this- "Guang Fu 1st", "Guang Fu 2nd", and so on. Even if my tones were wrong, please! If you came to Seattle and were looking for University Avenue, I don't care if you called it "Bluenivershitty Avenue" or "Gooniturdsity Plapenue" I could probably deduce what you were after. Please, Taiwanese, try a little harder!
    i'll be positive later. Right now I feel like I'm getting a cold so I'm grumpy.