America

I know that all the pictures thus far have been of Taiwan and Taiwanese things, but I couldn't resist making a short post on America. (Don't worry, I'll bring it back around to Taiwan in the end.) If you don't recognize the family in the photo you haven't spent as much time this month watching tv as I have. These people live in the midwest somewhere and are famous for having lots and lots of kids- 16 at last count. They dress all the boys in khakis and polo shirts, and all the girls dress like extras from little house on the prairie. This is not my problem- if I had that many kids I'd squash their sartorial creativity too. My issue is the haircuts, more specifically the mom's haircut. It's a teased version of the female mullet- long in the front and ratted out halo-style in the front. In the last tv special I saw the older daughters had adopted the same look. We'll ignore for a moment the wasted hours that must go into carefully teasing the halo every morning-- the part that interests me is that this is the only strange and bad hairdo I've seen since returning that could compete with Taiwanese strange and bad hairdos. Take that, misguided youth of Taiwan! You can go ahead and cut and crimp and perm and gel your hair into strange shapes inspired by stranger Japanese comic books, but you've been outdone by an American housewife with 16 kids. Ha! America wins again.

My car is my karaoke booth

Am I the only white girl speeding around the beltway screaming along with 阿信 (lead singer of 五月天, the hottie in the red shirt) and LeeHom? Possibly. But the radio just isn't doing it for me. What is with that "Black Horse and a Cherry Tree" song? Didn't we all get over it months ago after Katherine McPhee's cover on Idol? Why is it still on the radio? C'mon people. I was halfway around the world, and I still feel like this song has been overplayed. So I'm sticking with my Taiwanese pop. Look at the passion in this picture! Look at his perfect rock star lunge! Be amazed by how close I was ('props' to my roommate for providing the tickets)! I don't remember what song he was singing at this point, so I choose to believe that it was 温柔, and that at this moment he was belting out my favorite part of the song， when he sings 我給你自由－ 我給你自由－我給你自由－我給你自由－我給你全部全部全部全部自由. . . It's powerful.