Hey all you tens of readers! Happy almost new year and happy belated every other holiday of the year! I'm squeezing in a whopping second post of 2019 to let you know that 1) I'm still alive, 2) I'm no longer updating roboppy.net/food, and 3) I'm continuing this blog at roboppy.net.
Why the change? It's mostly a back end problem. I've been using the same CMS since 2004. It worked great, until it stopped getting updates over four years ago. Then it worked less great. But I kept using the CMS despite knowing how risky it was to put the fate of my blog in its creaky, rusted-over hands. Every time I published a post without making something on this website explode, I felt like I had barely evaded blog death through dumb luck. But while dumb can last forever (Ima prove it!), luck cannot. One day I won't be able to log in at all, and then I'll wanna die, hehehehehehe, I would often chuckle to myself, my blood pressure spiking with each nervous "heh."
And then back in May, I couldn't log in. I didn't chuckle. Nor die! Dumb luck came to my rescue once more. I managed to fix the problem thanks to one person on the internet who blogged the solution to the problem, a solution I would've never figured out on my own because I'm not a coder. But that problem finally made me realize that fixing a rusty junkyard car with scraps of twine fished out of a pile of street garbage damp with sewage is a very bad idea when you don't know anything about fixing cars or twine.
So I had to get a new CMS. Maybe I can export this blog and import it into a new one? I thought. And then the export function didn't work because it's just one of the many broken doohickeys dangling by the barest of threads out of this virtual junkyard car bound by garbage twine.
SOOOOO I figured, screw this. I'm gonna leave this blog here. It'll be fine. That meant I could set up my new blog anywhere else. It seemed like a good opportunity to escape the "/food" directory I had been in for over a decade, a designation that has made less sense the less I wrote about food.
And that's why I'm continuing this blog at roboppy.net. The blog name is the same because I still like it, and the design is still the same because I'm too lazy to make a new one, but it's otherwise kind of baby-fresh. And as a baby, it'll take years to become a fully grown boy/girl/something.
...Did I just abandon one kid, only to immediately make another one who has the same name and face?...what kind of monster...
...ANYWAY, I HOPE YOU'LL FOLLOW ME TO MY NEW HOME! OK THANKS!
]]>Many thanks to Didi Paterno, fellow food blogger and longtime friend of this blog, for interviewing me on Dayo Kitchen, her new website sharing cross-cultural stories about how our nationalities, ethnicities, and adopted homelands shape our foodways. I'm waiting to hear more about her story as a Filipino living in Texas by way of Dubai, but until then, you can read about my Taiwanese-Chinese-American-living-in-Norway self in this two-part interview:
Part 1: The Early Years
Part 2: Living Abroad
I can't say I provided the most interesting answers to Didi's questions, but I did bestow Didi with some of the wordiest answers, thus forcing her to split the interview into two posts so you don't have to scroll into the abyss. :D
Didi and I hope you enjoy the interview!
]]>I'm ashamed to say that after living in Bergen for over three years, I still conduct most of my interactions with Norwegians in English. The thing is, Norwegians tend to be really good at English and I tend to butcher their language with the grace of a toddler trying to wrangle a loose swarm of Vaseline-covered eels (don't know how the eels got covered in Vaseline, ain't gonna ask). So I just assume speaking English is the best method for reducing my embarrassment and retaining my will to face the outside world.
But I can speak some Norwegian, technically. Up until early January of this year, I was taking Norwegian classes in order to fulfill the requirements for applying for permanent residency and to take advantage of the free tuition I was granted. That means somewhere in my brain I have the knowledge to go about Bergen with semi-comprehensible Norwegian. All I have to do to unlock this knowledge is believe in myself get really drunk.
While I was taking classes, I wasn't 100% sure what requirements I was fulfilling. I had a general idea, but not the nitty gritty details. "Shouldn't you have figured all that stuff out before you started classes?" you may ask. Yeeeaaah. But judging from how often people in my classes asked our teachers about our requirements, I'd say a lot of people were confused about our requirements while we were in the process of fulfilling them.
That's why I wrote this FAQ-style post for anyone who's thinking of moving to Norway and wants to know more about the procedure for learning Norwegian that's available to and/or required for immigrants. (If you want to read about the procedure I went through to get my residence permit in Norway, head here!) The info in this post is based on whatever I could find through Google, as well as my experience taking classes in Bergen. What this post doesn't do is delve into the pitfalls and quirks of Norwegian grammar or pronunciation, nor give tips about how to learn Norwegian, because, in case I didn't make it clear, I kind of suck at Norwegian. I still constantly mess up subject and object pronouns, as well as placement of adverbs in subordinate clauses, and verb placement with inversion, and a bajillion other things. If you're learning Norwegian and don't know what I'm talking about, don't worry, you'll suffer at some point. In the meantime, newcomers to Norway should read A Frog in the Fjord, the best blog for learning about Norwegian culture and the variety of ways you can look like a dumbass while living here.
Although I've tried make the info in this post as accurate as possible, as well as clearly state when I'm unsure about something, keep in mind that I'm not an expert about the rules governing immigrants' rights and requirements. These rules can change at any time, sometimes in huge ways. (For example, when I moved to Norway in 2015, there was no income requirement to apply for permanent residency. Less than two years later in July 2017, UDI announced a new rule requiring most applicants to have a minimum yearly income of 242,966 NOK, about US$28,500. This rule is why I have yet to apply for permanent residency.) Check udi.no/en for the latest info. Any info I include here is based on my experience and what I know to the best of my knowledge.
Here's a rundown of the questions I try to answer in this post:
Probably. Most people between the ages of 16 and 67 have the obligation to take a certain number of hours of Norwegian classes and/or reach the A1 or A2 level of Norwegian, as well as take a Norwegian social studies class and test. (But those between the ages of 55 and 66 years old who got their first residence permit before January 1, 2017 are exempt. See what I mean about these rules changing at any time?) There are exemptions from these requirements, but if you have little to no knowledge of Norwegian language or culture, you probably won't qualify for them. Fill in your info at udi.no to find your requirements.
As a US citizen married to a Norwegian citizen, these are my tuition requirements to qualify for permanent residency:
Other people with different permits might only have to take 250 timer of Norwegian classes (or reach the A2 level) without any oral test requirement. The 600 cumulative timer of language and social studies classes is the maximum, as far as I know.
Timer is the plural form of time (pronounced like tee-meh), which means "hour", "period", or "appointment" depending on context. In the case of these tuition requirements, it means "period" even though it's translated on udi.no and other websites as "hour", a mistranslation I find super irritating because Norwegians know better than that, but whatever. In Norway, a period is a standardized 45 minutes. So 550 timer is really 412.5 hours and 50 timer is 37.5 hours.
For more about the use of time, watch the above video, "En time på norsk", from Norsklærer Karense on Youtube. In the video, Norwegian teacher Karense Foslien explains the different kinds of timer you may encounter in Norway and how long each time actually lasts.
It's the government's attempt to teach immigrants about Norwegian culture, social norms, laws, and rights, an attempt that succeeds in some parts and not so much in others. You can get an idea of the syllabus at samfunnskunnskap.no. The quality of your class depends largely on your teacher and classmates. I'm not going to say much about this class besides recommend that you ask your school about enrolling in it as soon as you can. You might have to wait a long time before there's an open spot. The school I attended only offered this class a few times a year, mostly during vacation weeks, which is why availability was sparse compared to Norwegian classes.
Then you don't have to complete the 550 timer. I guess the government had to come up with a reasonable number of hours of tuition they thought immigrants should take. I think most people can reach A2 in far less than 550 timer.
Because you might qualify for free classes, something you should take advantage of if you can. Also, the A2 level isn't that high—you should aim for B1 or higher. Of course, if you have better things to do with your time than go to class, you should prioritize reaching the level you want instead of taking 550 timer of class.
I qualified because I'm the family member of a Norwegian citizen (my husband), but there are other ways. Refugees and asylum seekers qualify for free tuition, as well as their family members. Being a family member of someone with permanent residency is also a qualifier, with some exceptions. Read more about tuition rights and requirements at IMDi (the Directorate of Integration and Diversity) in English or Norwegian.
(If you're looking at the Norwegian page, I'll give you a tiny Norwegian lesson. Rett og plikt means "rights and obligations". If you have rett og plikt to Norwegian tuition, that means you can get it for free and you have to fulfill a requirement. If you have plikt but not rett, you have to fulfill the requirement but you can't get free tuition.)
Most of my classmates had free tuition for the same reason I did: We were married to Norwegians. I also had a bunch of classmates who paid for their tuition, but they were outnumbered by those of us sucking up taxpayers' money (sorry, Norwegians, but hey, I'm a taxpayer too). As far as I know, those who don't qualify for free tuition at least have a lower class time requirement.
The free tuition comes with one free norskprøve, the test that determines which level you're at in the eyes of the Norwegian government. Most of my classmates took the B1-B2 norskprøve, as did I because I didn't want to waste my free test on an easy level.
You can break it up, but if you qualify for free tuition you have to use it within three years of when you got your temporary residence permit. I think this also applies to the norskprøve—you have to take it within three years to get it for free.
It depends on your school and your attendance. At my school, Nygård skole, most people take evening classes twice a week from 5 p.m. until 8:20 p.m., for a total of eight timer each week, aka six hours (there's a 20 minute break during each class). There's also a morning class that I've heard lasts something like seven hours and meets more days a week, but considering the school's website doesn't give many details about it, I'm guessing the class is mostly reserved for certain types of non-paying students.
This "long-ass morning class or shorter evening class" schedule was only implemented in August of 2017. Before then, there was also an afternoon class that met for 12 timer a week, spread over three to four days. That's the class I took from April 2016 to June 2017. It was a convenient time for me as it made me feel like I was doing something with my life between lunch and dinner and not just digesting my life away, but it must've been inconvenient for all the people who spent that time at work, contributing to society.
This class schedule is just one example. I have no idea if my school's class schedule is similar to other schools around the country.
Oh, uh, I didn't even answer the question. It took me a little over one and a half years to reach my 550 timer requirement (keeping in mind there are many weeks of vacation and other days off in between). I started in April 2016 and I reached 550 timer around October / November of 2017.
Nope! If I'm reading this correctly, the limit is 3000 timer, which is basically unlimited considering how much class time actually exists within a three-year period.
BUUUUT, and this is a big but, taking the norskprøve will likely place you out of your free tuition. Simply being in a B1-B2 class doesn't mean you've reached that level. You have to take the norskprøve to show what level you've reached. At my school, if you take the norskprøve and pass A2, then you no longer qualify for free tuition (I THINK, I'm not 100% positive). I guess this makes sense because you only need the level for permanent residency, not the hours. So don't take the norskprøve until you want to relinquish your right to your free tuition.
Another "but" for fast learners: If after self-studying Norwegian for a while you decide to register at your school to take advantage of your free classes, you may not qualify if the school finds your Norwegian level is already at A2 or above.
I purposely planned to take the norskprøve at around the same time that I'd meet my 550 timer requirement. I could've planned to take the norskprøve later and continued taking classes for free, but I got tired of going to class, besides that I wanted to use my time on other activities. As much as I liked my teacher and classmates, I did not want to deal with the evening schedule longer than I had to. I used 550 timer as my guideline for how long I'd attend class.
As someone who took a little over 550 timer of classes, I reached B1 in speaking and B2 in reading, writing, and listening on the norskprøve. You could definitely reach B1 in everything after 550 timer, if not B2. I didn't practice speaking that much—my classes focused more on reading and writing. And now that I'm not in class, I practice speaking even less. Hahahahaha fail.
Not high. I wouldn't be satisfied just passing the A2 level to fulfill my requirement. This is the breakdown of levels you can test into:
If you know some Norwegian, this Q&A may help give you an idea of which level you're in.
You should aim higher than A2, not just because A2 is too low to be that useful but because if you need to find a job, reaching B1 or higher will look better on your resume. (I will note that I have a friend from Japan who found an office job fairly quickly after moving here because the position required a Japanese speaker. She was also diligent with her job search. So if you have a skill that's in short supply, maybe you'll get lucky and find a good job that doesn't require Norwegian. Most immigrants aren't that lucky.) Many of my classmates' goals were to reach B2 for the purpose of attending university—B2 is the minimum for applying—or finding a better job. A few others were aiming for C1. To test for C1, you have to take the Bergenstest. I haven't taken the Bergenstest, so I can't say much about it.
Of course, only passing A2 doesn't mean you're not good at Norwegian. It might mean you're not good at taking tests, while "real world" you is good at Norwegian and can learn quickly on the job. It could also be the opposite, where reaching B1/B2 doesn't mean you're as good at Norwegian as you look on paper (this is my situation). I recommend most people to test at a higher level than A2 because, as far as I can tell, certifications carry a lot of weight in Norway, especially if you're not Norwegian and don't have anyone Norwegians to vouch for you.
It depends where you live. Ask the office where you're applying for temporary residency and they'll tell you.
People in Bergen who qualify for free tuition take classes at Nygård skole. The school has specific days and times when new students can register for classes.
People in Bergen who don't qualify for free tuition may also choose Folkeuniversitet. I've also met people who took free classes through the University of Bergen because their spouse worked there.
For a list of approved Norwegian schools around the country and on the internet, head to kompetansenorge.no.
The rest of my answers about classes apply to my experience at Nygård skole. I have no idea what schools in other cities are like, but I'd be curious to know more if you have experience at them.
It depends. If you're a paying student, I'm guessing you'd start soon after. In my case, I didn't start for a few months, but it wasn't due to a lack of classroom space. Since I registered as a non-paying student, I had to wait for my "free tuition" status to turn up in whatever database the school was looking at to check my background. Even though I got approved for temporary residency at the end of December 2015, when I went to my school to register early in the next year and received my class placement, the school said I wasn't listed as qualifying for free tuition and they didn't know when I would be. I spent a day going to a few offices—UDI, IMDi, and the immigration office at the police station—to see if anyone could figure out what was up with my status, but everyone was like ¯\_(ツ)_/¯. The school said there wasn't anything I could do besides wait, suggesting I check in with them after a month or so. I don't know if that's how long it took for me to get qualified for free tuition, but I did wait. And that's why I didn't start classes until April 2016, even though I got my residency approved about four months earlier. (I'm not saying this is a normal waiting time, but it's something that could happen. I was pretty lax about the whole situation, probably more than I should've been.)
At Nygård skole, not that difficult. These aren't university-level classes. Considering the wide range of students in the class—people from all over the world with different backgrounds, levels of education, and responsibilities outside of school—it makes sense that the classes aren't that intense.
But if you think the class is too easy, ask your teacher about switching to a higher level class, even if you're a total beginner. The higher level might only be mildly higher—a classmate and I switched out of our first class just to skip ahead by a few chapters—but small jumps can build up over a few semesters.
Not necessarily. There isn't a set number of chapters a teacher has to get you through in one semester, like, say, being required to finish a textbook by the time summer break begins. They go at the pace that they think the class is at. If you're faster or slower, they might recommend you for another class. But if one class moves faster or slower than another, I can't imagine the difference would be that big.
We used På Vei in my first class and part of the second (level A1-A2), then Stein på stein for the rest of the second class (A2-B1). There was no book for my third class (B1-B2). By that point our teacher used a variety of writing, reading, listening, and video materials taken from different textbooks and websites. My previous teachers also used non-book material in class.
If you qualify for free classes, the school will lend you the textbooks you need and give you the accompanying workbooks for you to keep. If you're a paying student, you'll have to buy these materials.
Pretty low. Considering that many students probably had families and/or jobs to attend to, teachers didn't pile on homework. That doesn't mean all the homework assignments were easy—I spent a lot of time on writing assignments as they got more difficult—but since my teachers usually assigned homework just once a week, it evened out to a low amount of work.
No. The closest grades we got were the scores on our infrequent (one every three chapters) tests. There wouldn't be much point to grading assignments. You and your teacher can tell how well you're doing based on in-class assignments and homework and how much you engage in the class. The only "grade" that matters is the level you reach on the norskprøve.
My classmates were great! Taking Norwegian classes was valuable not just for learning Norwegian but for meeting other people I could relate to. We may all come from different countries and speak different languages, but we can all share in the delight of bitching about Bergen (umm just some light bitching! Bergen is great! ALT FOR NORGE, WEEWOO!!!). I'm not drowning in new friends like some other people, but I'm comfortably lounging in a shallow kiddie pool of friends. Compared to the experience of some of my other immigrant friends here, that's not too bad.
I'd like to believe my experience is the norm, but some of my immigrant friends who took classes elsewhere didn't have as much classroom camaraderie as I experienced. Because it's in Bergen, Nygård skole probably has a more diverse student body than schools in other parts of the country.
If anyone has more questions, leave a comment below!
]]>I first met Charlotte in September 2014 in Taipei on a blind friend date at a vegetarian buffet restaurant. The date was set up by my dad and his friend Yang Shou, a mutual friend of my dad and Charlotte's mom. Also, my dad and Yang Shou came on our date. That way if Charlotte and I had the chemistry of spackle on burnt toast, we could disappoint our elders in real-time instead of later.
But potentially subjecting myself to awkwardness and disappointment was worth it, not just because I wouldn't have to pay for the meal (but free food is awesome, and a free buffet is awesomer), but because I desperately needed to meet new people. That summer of 2014, shortly before my 29th birthday, I left behind my longtime job and friends in New York and moved to my dad's apartment in Taipei in a last-ditch effort to learn my parents' native language from scratch and maybe not be a complete disappointment to my ancestors who, according to the 1998 historical documentary Mulan, were judging me beyond the grave. I was new in Taipei, surrounded by people I didn't know speaking a language I couldn't understand. If my dad had told me, "By the way, Charlotte's a lapsed cannibal," I would've thought, "How lapsed? If I rip my arm off and give it to her, will she like me more?"
After about a week of Mandarin classes, it was clear that fluency wasn't in my future and my ancestors would be disappointed in me forever. Armed with this healthy sense of despair, I turned my focus to people who were 1) not dead and 2) potentially desperate enough to hang out with me—people who could become my friends. But they had to be more than just not dead and desperate. They had to be partially resistant to the pull of people who were cooler than me, i.e., everyone else in the school/world. I figured I should try to make as many friends as possible to increase the probability that some of them would stick, like in the opening scene of the 2003 marine documentary Finding Nemo where Coral is lovingly tending to her over 400 fish eggs while chatting with Marlin about the great future they and their over 400 fish babies will have together in their new home, when a barracuda on the prowl suddenly spots them from afar but not far enough, so Coral rushes to save her eggs and Marlin gets knocked out in the race against the barracuda to reach Coral, and when he wakes up CORAL IS GONE and he finds just ONE SINGLE ITTY BITTY GLOBULE OF LIFE, which he gently cups with his fins and, with a quivering voice full of hope and devastation, names the egg Nemo like Coral would've wanted and promises to take care of Nemo and keep him safe forever and everrrrooomgioAIEEEglubblubbuhh [bawls until tomorrow].
Anyway, I needed to make a bajillion more friends in case nearly all of them were doomed to be eaten by a barracuda. (The barracuda = my crippling insecurity.)
But I didn't remember how to make friends. My friend-making method over the last decade went like this: "Chill out. If you're lucky, you'll eventually bump into someone cool." It was slow going, but given a ten-year period this method worked out pretty well. In Taipei, I only had ten months before I returned to the US. This was clearly an insufficient amount of time to make friends. Why bother trying when I could jump straight to the end result? That is, hold a one-person Fetal Position Olympics from the comfort of whichever corner of my room most resembled a medieval jail cell?
Alas, I was not meant to reach any achievements in fetal positioning. Because I met Charlotte. We hit it off during our blind friend date, reaching some kind of "FRIENDSHIP IS EMINENT" moment when Charlotte asked me if I wanted to check out the ice cream selection and...I may have been very excited about getting ice cream?...I dunno of course I was, it was a buffet, IT WAS UNLIMITED ICE CREAM. In the yearbook of my life, Charlotte's first superlative would be, "Best at preventing Robyn from fetal positioning herself to death."
Charlotte's superlatives kept rolling in. Hell, she got two more on the same day. After we ate lunch, we left my dad and Yang Shou (both non-disappointed, woo!) to go to one of Charlotte's favorite cafes, Ecole Café. There, at Charlotte's suggestion, I tried my first latte-esque drink in Taipei, thus setting the spark that would light a three-alarm fire of latte dependency and burn thousands of NT in the process. And thus Charlotte was deemed "Best at getting Robyn addicted to lattes" and "Most likely to make Robyn horribly caffeine-dependent in the future" at the same time. THANKS, CHARLOTTE!!!
It would take too long to list every superlative Charlotte earned over the ensuing 10 months in Taiwan, so I'll just pick some of my favorites:
"Best at sorting Robyn's garbage/recycling." (A very important task in Taiwan, for real.)
"Most likely to get herself and Robyn thrown out of a café for talking too loudly." (We weren't thrown out of Xiaomijo, but we were gently reminded about this rule.)
"Best at getting Robyn to do things that expand her cultural horizons." (Museums, concerts, hikes, the Pingxi Lantern Festival, anything involving a group of more than four people—Charlotte got me do a lot of stuff that I may not have otherwise chosen over my favorite activity, "sleeping too much".)
"Mostly like to be responsible if Robyn dies from eating a ton of soft serve."
"Mostly like to be responsible if Robyn dies from eating a ton of pineapple cakes."
In June 2015, I moved back to New Jersey. As I now lived a 15-hour flight away from Charlotte instead of a 15-minute walk, the superlatives died down. But not completely.
In August 2015, Charlotte came to my wedding and earned "Best bridesmaid that Robyn has been friends with for the shortest amount of time." That was a pretty major superlative.
Or so I thought, until December 2016, when this happened:
"BEST AT ORDERING A GIANT MANATEE-SHAPED DOUGHNUT FOR ROBYN."
And shortly after:
"BEST AT EATING A GIANT MANATEE-SHAPED DOUGHNUT FOR ROBYN."
In December 2016, over a year after I had moved to Norway, my husband Kåre and I returned to New Jersey for our winter vacation to visit my mom and brother. This was shortly after Charlotte had left Taipei and moved back home to Rhode Island. That meant we absolutely had to go on a...RHODE ISLAND RHODE TRIP (heh...see what I did there...hey, where are you going?...). Our plan was to visit her at her parents' place for a few days in order to eat, at my request, a custom-ordered, manatee-shaped doughnut cake—i.e., a giant manatee-shaped doughnut—from Allie's Donuts, a Rhode Island favorite that's been making doughnut dreams come true for the last 50 years. We would considering fitting in other activities if the doughnut was somehow not enough.
(If you're wondering, "Why a manatee?", I'll assume you're new around here. Which is cool! Welcome! So. I like manatees. Yeah. Here's a post about that time my friends bought me a giant plush manatee for my birthday. And here's another post about the time I took a bunch of photos of the manatee on the subway.)
But as we got closer to the big day, the trip became less and less feasible. Kåre had gotten sick one-and-a-half weeks into our four-week vacation from some sort of mild viral infection that doctors weren't able to pin down. Although the Rhode Island trip wasn't until Week Four, Kåre's lack of progress gave us little hope that he'd return to full health in time. (He ended up spending most of the trip under self-imposed house arrest, getting lots of bonding time with my mom in the process.) Less than a week before our scheduled trip, I told Charlotte that she shouldn't order the doughnut cake because with Kåre being sick, we weren't sure if we could make it. She agreed that not ordering the doughnut cake was the responsible thing to do.
A few days later, she told me she ordered the doughnut cake anyway. You know. JUST IN CASE.
This was when I, being the caring and loving wife I am, starting drilling into Kåre, "YOU MUST BECOME UNSICK, THERE'S A GIANT MANATEE DOUGHNUT IN OUR FUTURE. DO YOU UNDERSTAND WHAT I AM SAYING? ARE YOU EVEN SICK? DO YOU EVEN LOVE ME?"
Kåre's response was probably something akin to [stares at the wall, focuses on nothing].
With a tourniquet-like grip, I held on to the hope that Kåre would recover in time. I kept chatting with Charlotte as though the meet-up would happen, constantly shifting plans as the days counted down. But I think we both knew deep down—in the parts of our brains not blinded by the sweet, sweet promise of ripping apart a giant manatee-shaped doughnut with our bare hands, ejecting a flurry of sprinkles and frosting glops with each severed chunk—that Kåre and I wouldn't make it. I can still remember, with the kind of movie-like clarity generally reserved for life-changing moments (riding a two-wheel bike for the first time, seeing the windshield of my mom's car get completely shattered after a goose flew into it for the first time, etc.), waking up the morning of the Manatee Doughnut Christening, turning in the bed towards Kåre, and gently asking him how he felt. This was, you know, partially because I cared about his well being, but, uh, more so because if he felt better that meant we could still drive up to Rhode Island AND GET THAT DOUGHNUT, and see Charlotte.
His response was more moans than words. I picked up my phone and sent a message to Charlotte with the bad news, followed by some Facebook stickers of crying faces. Charlotte told me that our cancelation was totally fine, as well as reminded me that Kåre not dying was a priority.
I felt guilty for burdening Charlotte with a doughnut meant to serve a dozen people, as well as for wasting her time and money on our doughnut adventure that wasn't meant to be, but she assured me it was okay. Besides that the custom manatee doughnut only cost $24, her parents offered to help her eat it as well as invite the neighbors to try it. Except they didn't invite the neighbors. Because as soon as they started eating the doughnut they decided to go all-in on it themselves.
"She [Charlotte's mom] had five slices and wants one for her birthday," Charlotte wrote me in an update about the doughnut. "I did not see that coming."
Although I was a little bummed about missing out on the Great Manatee Doughnut Devouring, imagining that Charlotte and her parents were happily feasting on it together like a Rockwellian turkey dinner made me feel much better.
And then I asked Charlotte how it actually went down. Here's the story in her own words:
So, we get this donut cake, and Allie's Doughnuts are AWESOME. And it's huuuuuuuge, and my parents are like, "You made a mistake, this is your fault, we are only three, how can we eat this....? But....one bite couldn't hurt...."
Picture less Norman Rockwell, and more how sharks circle and feast on dead whale carcasses in the ocean. Circling....biting...swimming away...returning in the dead of night to feast again with no witnesses. And lots of "WHO ATE LIKE THIS HUGE PIECE?" And no one making eye contact, and me going, "THERE ARE ONLY THREE OF US HERE, COME ON, WHY THE SILENCE?" And lots of "CHARLOTTE, LOOK WHAT YOU MADE US DOOOOOOOO.....nom nom nom nom nom nom nom nom.....WHYYYYY.....nom nom nom nom nom nom.....I FORBID ANY MORE DONUT CAKES......nom nom nom nom nom"
I think it was gone in three days, and I have no idea who ate how much, because so much of it was eaten when no witnesses were around.
THERE WAS NO DIGNITY IN THAT HOUSEHOLD FOR A WEEK. WE ALL COULD BARELY LOOK AT OURSELVES IN THE MIRROR.
And this I must bestow Charlotte with this final, and perhaps my favorite, superlative: "Best at giving Robyn a weird sense of pride for playing a part in that time when Charlotte's family traded their dignity for a giant manatee-shaped doughnut."
3661 Quaker Lane, North Kingstown, RI 02852 (map)
facebook.com/AlliesDonuts
To find out more about ordering a doughnut cake from Allie's Donuts, check out Allie's Donuts' Facebook page (and don't miss their gallery of doughnut cakes). If you want to order a cake for a special holiday, do it waaaay in advance. Their doughnut cakes sell out.
]]>Did you move to Norway and get your temporary residence permit approved? Woohoo! Bask in the warm 'n fuzzy glow of legally-binding acceptance!
BUT YOU AIN'T DONE YET. That is, assuming you also want a bank account, a doctor, Norwegian classes, and more.
Here's a basic list of services to check out after you get your residence permit in Norway. Some of these rely on you having a residence permit, some don't. The first step is the most important, while everything else is in a mixed order of what I think is important and what fits the theme. Your order of importance may be completely different.
If you have any questions or suggestions for this list, please let me know by leaving a comment at the end of the post or sending me a message at roboppy@gmail.com.
After getting your residence card, you have to report your move to Norway at the tax office (Skatteetaten). No appointment neccessary—just show up with the correct forms and documents. In Bergen, the tax office is located by the main bus station at Nonnesetergaten 4.
Registering at the tax office will get you your national ID number (fødselsnummer). Your ID number is your key to the kingdom. Once you get the number, memorize it. YOU WILL USE IT A LOT. It's like a social security number in the US but used far more often. You'll need your national ID number to sign up for government services, sign into government websites, get credit checks, sign up for phone plans, etc. But don't give out your ID number unless absolutely necessary—it can be used to steal your identity.
Now that you have a national ID number, you can get a bank account! ...Maybe. It depends on the bank.
For my first attempt at getting a bank account, I went to DNB, the most international bank in Bergen. Alas, when I went to their office, an apologetic bank representative told me they don't give bank accounts to jobless bums (not her exact words, but close enough). [EDIT: The job requirement is for foreign residents, not Norwegian citizens.] I gave her an understanding smile to mask the crunching sound of my sense of self-worth shriveling up like a ball of foil.
Thankfully, Sparebanken Vest doesn't discriminate against jobless bums like me. A very friendly bank dude signed me up for an account without any problem. So far, I give the bank thumbs up. One minor downside is that their website is in Norwegian, but it's easy enough to navigate with a translator until you learn enough Norwegian banking vocabulary.
Now that you have a bank account, you can sign up for BankID. BankID is one of a few options under the ID-porten system that allows you to log into a bagillion Norwegian government services, sort of like using Facebook or Google to log into the rest of the internet. You don't have to use BankID to do this—I'm just singling it out it because that's the option I use.
As the name implies, to use BankID you need to have a bank account. To log into a website with BankID you'll have to use the security token generator you received from your bank when you signed up, along with your national identity number and password. When I travel, I sometimes bring my security token generator with me just in case I need to log into something while I'm away.
If you don't have an bank account, sign up for MinID.
Head to Helsenorge.no to learn about public health services in Norway. For personalized information, log into minhelse.helsenorge.no to look up your GP (fastlege), your prescriptions, how much you've spent on doctor's visits and prescription medication, and more. Your GP is automatically assigned—you can switch your doctor up to two times a year if you want. Since I haven't used a lot of medical services in Norway yet, I can't comment much on the site's other features. Seeing how much I've spent each year is pretty handy, though.
You're set for health care in Norway, but for other parts of Europe, you should get a (free) European Health Insurance Card. The card is valid in EEA countries for certain kinds of health care. Read more about it at helsenorge.no. From there you can access a form to order your card.
If you plan on applying for permanent residency or citizenship someday, you'll probably have to prove you've reached a certain level of Norwegian as part of your application. Luckily, you might qualify for free Norwegian classes. While you may not need Norwegian classes to reach the minimum levels for permanent residency or citizenship, you should take advantage of the classes if they're free.
When you get your residence permit, your local immigration office should give you information about your Norwegian class requirements, whether or not you have the right to free classes, and where to register for classes (and if they don't give you this information, ask them). If you live in Bergen, you'll register at Nygård skole.
(I'm writing a separate post about the Norwegian language requirement and my experience taking Norwegian classes. When it's up, I'll link it here.)
Put your name on your mailbox as soon as you move to Norway (and if there's an old name on your mailbox, make sure to fully remove or cover it). If your mailbox is outside, make sure the label is weather-proof. If you live in an apartment building, do not just label the mailbox with your apartment number. Write your name clearly, ideally typed out, with your full first and last name. Basically, the easier your name is to read and the more information you give the mailman, the easier it is for them to deliver your mail. (If you want to write your name in tiny squiggly cursive with a hard-lead pencil, and only use your first initial plus your last name, just keep in mind that you're making your mailman's life harder. I say this from experience as a part-time mailman in downtown Bergen.)
If you don't want to receive the ads that get mailed out to everyone a few times a week, get a "Nei, Takk" sticker from your local post office or attach some sort of note on the outside of your mailbox that says "nei takk til uadressert reklame". It doesn't have to be fancy, just clearly visible. (Only private entities can refuse ads. Businesses cannot refuse ads. There are certain ads that are only delivered to businesses, and having a "Nei, takk" sticker won't stop them.)
If you're moving within Norway, follow the steps at Posten.no to ensure that your mail gets forwarded to your new address. Besides that doing so makes the post office's life easier, you'll get free forwarding for two months, so there's no reason not to do it.
Use Digipost to securely receive mail from certain public and private entities. For example, I've gotten mail here from health services, the police office, my employer, and the tax office. I don't get much mail through here, but it's nice to have a secure place for these types of messages.
Altinn is your digital inbox and repository for all kinds of government-related forms, primarily tax and business forms up the wazoo. You don't sign up for it like Digipost—you automatically have access with Bank ID/MinID. My Altinn inbox is where I get important messages related to my taxes and my freelance business. You probably won't need Altinn until you do your taxes for the first time, but before then you can poke around to get familiar with the website.
Since I don't have a full-time job in Norway, I wanted the opportunity to at least do freelance work as a photographer or anything else people might be willing to pay me for (I have yet to figure out what the "anything else" is). In Norway you have to register a sole proprietorship business to earn money as a freelancer. It's free and easy to register—just check out the info at altinn.no/en/start-and-run-business.
Keep in mind that once you register your business, the personal information you registered is publicized by websites combing the business database. (Hell, I only realized now that my business has its own automated LinkedIn page.) Granted, this is probably what you want, unless you're like me and don't do much work through your business. My business info being out in the wild is why I get loads of sales calls, all of which I ignore thanks to the 180.no app.
Having your own business may also complicate your taxes. I can't explain much about how—I am the opposite of a tax expert—it's just something for you to keep in mind. The official tax website got redesigned over the last year and many of the pages have yet to be translated into English.
For making Norwegian invoices, I've used the website Conta Faktura. I can't compare it to other invoicing services since it's the only one I've used, but it's worked find for me.
Depending on what kind of job you want in Norway, you might have to get your foreign degree(s) evaluated to find their Norwegian counterparts. That's what Nokut is for. I did this for my undergraduate degree, even though it may not qualify me for much. But it's free and fairly easy to do, so why not.
In a country known for being expensive, take advantage of free books, movies, and events at your local library. Norway's national library card allows you to borrow media from just about any library in Norway. Go to your local library and they should be able to help get a card. After you sign up, you can also use eBokBib, an app for borrowing and downloading Norwegian e-books on your phone/tablet.
For those who live in Bergen, here's info about how to sign up. After that, you can use sign into mitt.bergenbibliotek.no to do stuff like search for books, reserve books, and extend your loans. Also download the Bibliofil app, which works like the website but also has a barcode you can use as your library card.
Look up public transportation in your area and find out what travel card or app you should use, like Ruter in Oslo, AtB in Trondheim, or Kolombus in Stavanger.
If you live in Bergen, you'll be using Skyss to take the bus or Bybanen. You can order a travelcard online for free. I like to have a travelcard on hand even though I usually use the Skyss ticket app to buy tickets. Before you buy tickets, see if you qualify for any discounts. Also download the schedule app Skyss Travel to look up routes and timetables. When you buy a ticket on your phone, you activate it on your phone. It becomes valid after two minutes. If you're using a card or paper ticket from a machine, you activate it on the bus/Bybanen.
There's also a fairly new app called Entur where you can search for routes for public transport all around Norway, but it currently only allows you to buy tickets in the Oslo area.
Vipps is the standard payment app in Norway. Most people here use debit/credit cards instead of cash, and checks are basically nonexistent. If you want to pay back friends or send people money (and, you know, make it easier for other people to send YOU money), Vipps is the easiest way.
For all things car and driving-related, head to vegvesen.no. If you feel confident about your driving skills, allow me to shoot your confidence in the foot. A common gripe among immigrants (and probably Norwegians) is that it's difficult and expensive to get a driver's license here. The fees for classes and tests will cost you hundreds of US dollars. And if you fail the test over and over again, as I've heard some people have experienced, you could spend a small fortune getting your license.
And thus I haven't gotten my license yet. ...Also because I don't know how to drive manual, which I'd need to learn to use Kåre's car (yeah, I should've learned by now), and I enjoy being in the driver's seat as much as I enjoy being covered in infected mosquito bites. But these excuses are indefensible considering Norway makes it easier for people with US licenses to get a Norwegian license than people from some other countries. Check out the list of qualifying countries here. If you have a license from one of these countries, you can exchange your license to get exempt from certain requirements for your Norwegian license. Do it within one year of residency for the most exemptions. Within two years and you'll have more requirements, but not all of them. After that, you'll have to start from scratch. Read about the requirements and deadlines for exchanging your license here..
As for what "starting from scratch" entails, check out training timeline for a passenger car license. It's intense, at least compared to the driving lessons I took in New Jersey. After reading the training descriptions, I feel like I've never actually learned how to drive, even though I've had my NJ license for about 15 years and I drive fairly competently every time I'm back in the US ("fairly competently" = "haven't fully crashed into anything").
I'm ok with starting from scratch. It's for the best—as in, best for the safety of the innocent people around me—seeing as I'm not a great driver. I'm inordinately afraid of driving in Bergen for someone who's mostly driven on far more congested roads with less-skilled drivers. But until I pass the road test, I AM SWOLLEN WITH FEAR. I mean, good god, the road test is over an hour long. The road test I took in New Jersey as a teenager was some sort of five-minute, closed kiddie course. Don't get me wrong—I'm glad Norway takes their road safety much more seriously than New Jersey does—but can't stop thinking about my inevitable failure.
You'll probably be shopping at supermarkets more than any other store in Norway. So MILK 'EM FOR ALL THEY'RE WORTH. And maybe get free milk, as well as other discounts and freebies. There's Æ for Rema 1000, Trumf for Meny, Kiwi, Joker, and more, and Coop for the gajillion Coop chains.
Amazon doesn't have a Norway-based website. If you moved from a country with Amazon, that's probably for the best. At least, I'm happy that I'm buying less unnecessary crap on a whim. But assuming you'll want to buy something online at some point, you should check out the price comparison websites Prisjakt or Prisguiden. They're about as close to Norwegian Amazon as you'll get. Type in the item you're looking for and those websites will show you online stores that sell it (Prisjakt also shows physical stores), as well as current prices, price history, stock info, shipping info, and reviews. Sign up for an account to save items you want to follow. It's a good way to get the best deals on pricier items.
]]>When Kåre and I had to decide whether I would move to Norway or he would move to the US after we got married, the discussion went a little something like this:
Me: You have a job, and a car, and an apartment that you own and aren't renting from a landlord you've never met before. I've got...[counts on fingers]...none of the above.
Him: Yeah....
Me: And Norway will give me access to affordable health care and medication in exchange for being a living human who pays taxes?
Him: Yeah...
Me: And applying for residency is a fairly straightforward process?
Him: I think so.
Me: And you think I'll be able to find a job at some point?
Him: ...Yeah...
Me: Cool. NORWAY, HERE I COME.
The next time I get stuck in a loop of indecision while staring at a menu of pizza toppings, I should remind myself that I spent less time figuring out which country I wanted to live in for, possibly, the rest of my life.
In mid-October of 2015, I moved to Norway. A few weeks later, I started my application for a temporary residence permit (midlertidig oppholdstillatelse), the "starter" permit that can eventually lead to a permanent residence permit (after three years) or citizenship (after seven years). By Christmas the following month, my application was approved. Just as Kåre and I had hoped for, applying for my residence permit was fairly simple and went much faster than we thought it would. Although my experience as an American married to a fully employed Norwegian citizen may not be the norm—I feel like it's a best-case scenario—I'll describe the process I went through for those who are interested in moving to Norway or are curious about the process.
For those who are actually planning on moving to Norway and aren't just reading this post for fun, please read the rest of this paragraph in BIG, SCREAMING, FIREY LETTERS: Although I've tried to make my post as informative and accurate as my memory and Googling skills allow, I am not an expert about Norwegian immigration regulations (or anything else). This is not an all-encompassing guide to getting a residence permit in Norway. Do not use my post as your main source of information. You need to look up your requirements on udi.no and research accordingly. Even if your situation is the same as mine—you're a US citizen moving to Norway as the spouse of a Norwegian citizen—my experience from 2015 will not be exactly the same as yours. Immigration requirements can be changed at any time, sometimes in small ways, sometimes in "holy shizz wtf" ways.
But don't feel intimidated! As long as you do your research, you should be fine.
Depending on your citizenship and the reason you're applying for a residence permit, you may be able to apply in Norway. Otherwise you'll probably have to apply from your home country and stay there until you get a reply. Figuring this out is a good place to start so you can get an idea when you can move to Norway and whether you'll be stuck in your home country or Norway as you wait for your application to be processed.
To find out what route you can take, head to Udi.no, the website for the Norwegian Directorate of Immigration (Utlendingsdirektoratet). You can either check out the Q&A section of your reason for applying or go through UDI's application wizard, until you get to the part where it asks where you wish to hand in your application. The wizard will tell you whether or not you can do it in Norway. Depending on where you're from, you may need a certain kind of permit, visa, or other qualifications to apply in Norway.
...Or none of the above. In my situation, my only requirement for applying in Norway was that I do it within 90 days of my arrival (that is, the maximum length of stay as a visa-free tourist from the US). So that's what I did.
Because I submitted my application in Norway, most of the information in this post pertains to the process of submitting an application in Norway. If you need to submit your application from your home country, you'll have to look up the information that pertains to your situation.
To find out your requirements for getting a temporary residence permit, go to UDI's Want to apply page and fill in your information. At the end of the application wizard, you'll get a link to a checklist of requirements tailored to your situation.
If you want to see an example of the required documents and forms for a US citizen with a Norwegian spouse (aka, me), here's the checklist. Besides standard documents like your passport, birth certificate, and marriage certificate, there are some other documents and forms you and/or your spouse need to provide, like this marriage questionnaire.
The list of requirements today looks pretty much the same as the list I got in 2015, except for one thing at the bottom:
"You must also bring copies of all the documents. The copies must be stamped by the authorities in your country, or by a notarius publicus."
I don't remember exactly what my form said when I applied in 2015, but whatever it said, it allowed me to make certified copies (rett kopi) of my American documents in Norway. Today's requirement seems to be that you need to make notarized copies in your home country. Since I didn't have to do this, I can't give any advice about the process. Definitely check this requirement before you head to Norway. If I ended up at the immigration office with the correct original documents but the wrong copies, the next day's local newspaper might feature a photo of me over a headline like, "American woman permanently stuck in fetal position."
Check the latest application fees to make sure you can pay for all this stuff you're prepping for. Today's fee for first-time adult applicants is 10,500 NOK. When I applied in 2015, the fee was only 5,900 NOK. I'm not saying the new fee is unreasonable, but damn, that's not an inflation-matching increase. What happened in the last three years? I don't know. (But I'm guessing Norway's conservative coalition government didn't help.) Immigration regulations change frequently—always make sure you have the latest information.
If you have more questions that UDI's website doesn't answer, contact UDI. I once sent them some questions through their online form and they got back to me quite quickly. UDI also has Facebook pages where you can ask questions related to family immigration and work immigration (or read other people's questions).
On a semi-related note, if you need to get passport photos in Bergen for your application, you can do this at a photo booth on the first floor of Bergen Storsenter.
Once you turn in your application, you'll probably have to stay put in your home country or in Norway until you get a reply. To get an idea of how long this may take before you start your application, head to UDI's case processing times page and choose the type of application you plan on doing. As an example, UDI says a case like mine—a US citizen applying under family immigration though marriage to a Norwegian citizen—normally takes six months to process. And that's today, as of March 2018. By the time you apply, it could be shorter. I'm pretty sure the process time was longer when I applied in 2015. Due to the estimated processing time I read on UDI's website, I didn't make any plans to travel out of Norway for about a year.
But every application is different. Your actual processing time could be nothing like UDI's proposed processing times, for better or worse. In my case, it was for better. Here the rough timeline of my application process:
My case was processed in less than a month. I don't know how common that timeframe is, just that it was way off UDI's estimate. Although I don't know exactly what conditions sped up my processing time, it didn't hurt that I had all the correct documents. As far as I know, having all the correct documents meant my application was processed locally in Bergen instead of sent to the central UDI office where it could get stuck in some sort of "incomplete applications" purgatory. An easy way to screw up your application is to having the wrong vital documents or apostilles.
And so comes the next important step...
The first time I went to my local immigration office to hand in my documents, my pulse didn't fully slow down to its resting rate until the clerk carefully flipped through my documents and told me I had everything in order. After I mentally sighed with enough force to deflate my brain into a raisin-esque nubbin, I asked the clerk, "How often do people not have all the right documents?"
"It happens more often than you might think," she said. "Some people come here without realizing that they're missing documents they need from their home country."
And thus comes the first step in collecting everything you need for your application: Make sure you have all the right documents from your home country before you move to Norway (if you're applying in Norway). This part of the application process almost felt more complicated than what I had to do in Norway.
In my case, that meant before I left the US, I needed to get an apostille for two documents: my marriage certificate and my birth certificate. The apostille renders those official documents valid in certain foreign countries, such as Norway. Depending on what states you were married and born in, the process of getting an apostille may or may not be fast and inexpensive. Since I got married in New York City and was born in New Jersey, I'll explain how I got the apostilles for my marriage certificate in Manhattan and my birth certificate in Trenton. I applied for the apostilles in person but they can also be obtained through the mail. (Shout-out to my mom who came along for the whole process, whether it was by car, train, or subway. THANK YOU, MOM, I LOVE YOOOUUU, pleasedon'tleavemeever.)
If you need certificates from another state, you'll have to look up the information for that state. Every state has different procedures. Even if you need the same certificates I did, check the appropriate government websites for the latest requirements in forms, IDs, payments, and more.
To get your marriage certificate apostille in Manhattan, you need to go to three offices in a certain order, paying various fees along the way with different methods of payment because, you know, the more important something is, the easier it should be to screw up getting that thing. On the bright side, the offices are all within walking distance of one another in the Financial District. Start early in the day and you'll be done in a few hours if all goes well.
Head to the City Clerk Marriage Bureau to get your marriage certificate for foreign use ($35, credit card or money order) from the Office of Records. This is not the same certificate as the one you got when you first got married. It looks almost the same but also features the signature and seal of the County Clerk's office. Now it is more acceptable in the eyes of the Norwegian government, unlike the other one, which is flat garbage.
You need to head to the Notary Section in the basement of the Supreme Court, room 141B, to get your marriage certificate authenticated with the City Clerk's signature ($3, cash or credit card).
This process was surprisingly fast—I didn't have to wait long in the building's security line, and getting the signature seemed to take less than a minute. I wouldn't have minded waiting a bit longer considering it was my first time in the building and the architecture is beautiful (aside from the notary public, which has the charm of the DMV), but it's a good thing it was fast because the next and last step took the longest.
Finally, you can get that damn apostille. Take all your stamped shizz and your apostille form to the 2nd floor of the Department of State at the Apostille/Certification office to get the authentication of the County Clerk's signature and the attachment of the apostille ($10, money order or check). After waiting in line and handing in all your documents, you'll want to park yourself in one of the provided seats as you wait to get your apostilled certificate. (This is way more like the DMV than the notary section.) I waited close to an hour.
Compared to other states, New Jersey appears to reach an impressive level of incompetence and/or greed when it comes to getting apostilles. I don't know how else to explain why NJ is the only state I could find where you have to pay a ridiculous amount to get a same-day apostille. (But if your state does this too, let me know! Although I'd like to look up the info for every state*, I also want to finish writing this post before the first Martian Olympics.) In other states I looked up, if you bring your form to the office you can get your apostille processed the same day, like what I did to get my marriage certificate apostille in NYC. Otherwise, you can get the apostille through the mail, which tends to be fairly quick and priced the same.
* I didn't look up the apostille information of every state, but I looked up enough to have a favorite apostille website: Alaska! You win! Your page was so epically thorough and amicable that I felt compelled to read the whole thing! ...Why, yes, I don't get out enough.
But NJ is special. UP TO ONE THOUSAND AND TWENTY-FIVE DOLLARS SPECIAL. That's the price if you want your apostille in an hour. If you can bear the agony of waiting two hours, the price is a mere $525. For real, check out the full price list here.
It may be unfair to compare these prices to other states considering I didn't find 1- or 2-hour processing offered in the other states I checked, but I think that's because most states wouldn't see the need. Outside of NJ, there's some kind of mutual understanding that a few hours is a reasonable amount of time to process an apostille, no exorbitant fee required.
Thankfully, there is an affordable fast-but-not-same-day option: next-day expedited for $40. I chose this instead of the cheapest $20 option because I waited way too long to start the process of getting my birth certificate apostille and couldn't risk the regular processing time of up to 20 days. "Next-day expedited" means the document will be processed within 8.5 business hours. That's well worth the extra $20 to avoid potentially waiting 20 days. I brought a pre-paid FedEx envelope to the apostille office to make things snappier.
Up until I got to the Division of Revenue and Enterprise Services to turn in my apostille application and birth certificate, my confidence in the system was a bit shaky. But when I saw the office, I changed my tune. "This looks like a trustworthy place with skilled employees who will get my application done far sooner than 8.5 business hours," I thought.
Shortly after I handed my documents to the clerk, all the lights in the room turned off. The building had been hit by a power outage. My timing was perfect. Or very close to not perfect. After waiting around for a while with other employees, we were ushered down the stairs to exit the building. Unlike the employees, I WAS FREE. WOOHOO.
But wait, there's more. In early November, 2015, a few weeks after I had moved to Norway, my mom received a notice in the mail that there had been a burglary at the Office of Vital Statistics and Registry, the office where I ordered my birth certificate. The notice was sent to those of us who had recently made a payment to the office, informing us to monitor our bank accounts and call the police if our checks cleared.
I won't tell you what happened to my check. I'll just say that I may or may not have had to call the police, and I may or may not have saved $25.
(I don't mean to be hard on the good people doing their damndest to keep New Jersey running despite the obstacles in their way. All the employees I encountered were nice and professional, and there was hardly any wait for service at either office. I can't complain—I got my birth certificate and apostille in a timely manner. And I'm going to tell myself that power outages and burglaries build character.)
Head to the Office of Vital Statistics and Registry at the Department of Health to get your certified copy of your birth certificate ($25, check or money order). You cannot get this at the office of vital records in the county you were born (which I know because I tried); you have to get it from the Trenton office.
Bring your birth certificate, apostille form, and prepaid envelope of your choice to the Division of Revenue and Enterprise Services to get your apostille ($25-$1025, check or credit card, or maybe your first-born).
I mentioned this rule earlier in my post. Something different with today's requirements compared to when I applied in 2015 is that you may have to make notarized copies of your marriage certificate, birth certificate, and passport in your home country. Since I didn't have to do this, I can't say with complete certainty that this is what you have to do, nor can I say anything about the process.
Got all your apostilles and vital documents in order? Woohoo! Time to move to Norway and do all the other stuff!
At the end of UDI's application wizard, Step 2 will direct you to UDI's Application Portal to fill out a form and book an appointment. Fill out the online form and book your appointment before working on your other forms and documents. The next available appointment may be weeks away, so it's better to get on this earlier than later. For instance, the first time I tried to booked an appointment, I had to choose an appointment date that was over a month away. If you don't see any available appointments in the booking calendar, check again the next day (and the next). This happened to me when I had to book an appointment to renew my permit.
UDI's website will tell you where you need to go for your appointment. If you live in Bergen like I do, you'll head to the immigration office at Nesttunbrekka 95 in Nesttun, conveniently located a short walk away from the Skjoldskiftet bybanen stop. There's no need to show up much earlier than your appointment since there will be other people waiting for their appointments before yours. I learned that lesson during my first visit, when I got to the immigration office waaaay too early. I spent the extra time waiting around nervously until a clerk took me five minutes before my scheduled time.
As for why I was nervous, it was a little bit due to my fear that something was wrong with my application. I think that's pretty normal, mentally flipping through all the ways your application could be rejected mere moments before facing The Powers That Be. Less normal was the main cause of my nervousness, which was that I didn't totally understand how to turn in my application. It's not like the queue to the counter was a maze lined with rusty, flame-spurting spikes, or screaming babies with cavernous lung capacities. It was worse. It was a maze only I could see. A maze...of...the....miiiind.
Before I drag you along for a ride on my crazy train, I'll summarize the experience and let you be the judge.
You see the problem? Even though the clerks have the knowledge to call people to a counter, they don't necessarily do it, and those of us who made appointments don't necessarily know when to go to a counter. There's an unnecessary void of communication. That void is the foundation of my maze.
If you're a normal, reasonable person then you might be thinking, "I don't see what the problem is. Just go up to a counter when it's your appointment time." Being a normal person, your skin probably consists of a dermis overlaid with an epidermis. If you're a less normal person like me, you might have an extra, medically unrecognized layer between the dermis and epidermis I like to call "¡PANIC BLOOD!" This layer—which consists of, you guessed it, panic blood—keeps us on our toes with quivering waves of endless doubt and anxiety cycling at a rate akin to that of a hummingbird flapping its wings, more so if the hummingbird is full of panic blood.
So even though I know what time my appointment is, I'm not sure if it's my turn because I don't know who's supposed to go before whom. If by the time my appointment rolls around there are still ten people waiting who got there before me, I'm going to wonder, "Are those people supposed to go first?" I think most people would try to avoid cutting in front of someone else. Hence the doubt and anxiety.
Yup, I've definitely wasted too much of my life thinking about this. Through my cathartic keyboard smashing, I've realized that the problem is so trivial that the immigration office probably doesn't think it's a problem. It's not like there's chaos or angry mobs. Everyone gets their meeting in the end. And I'm not against the clerks—I've always found them cordial and efficient. It's certainly not their fault that they don't know about my ¡PANIC BLOOD! layer. I'm just against the office's weird system.
One "improvement" I noticed during my most recent visit a few months ago is that small red and green lights have been installed above each counter to designate whether the counter is open or not. I'm not sure the lights were being used in a helpful way—maybe the lights were so new that clerks weren't using them correctly—but I guess it's better than nothing. It at least shows that the office is aware that their system could use some work, which is both reassuring and frustrating.
...Well, when you eventually get to a counter, the process should go quickly if all your documents are in order. And if you took the Bybanen to the office, your ticket will probably still be valid by the time you leave, seeing as it's good for 90 minutes within Bergen. Hooray, a round trip for a single fare! CELEBRATE THE LITTLE THINGS. (A single fare is 37 NOK, which is close to US$5. Ima milk that fare for all it's worth.)
And now you wait.
The only follow-up I got to my application was a request from the police station for wedding photos. And Kåre got that request, not me. I heard that couples may be asked to be interviewed, but that didn't happen with us.
In late December, a representative from the police station called Kåre to ask for our wedding photos. Kåre immediately emailed back some of our wedding photos, plus a link to our online album. The next day, Kåre received an email saying my application was approved. Within a few days, we got an official notice in the mail from the police station about my approved application. From the time I handed in my application to getting the approval was only about two weeks.
And on December 24, I found out my application was approved. Since Kåre got the good news before I did, he kept the approval a secret from me until Christmas Eve, allowing him to dramatically reveal the news as a mildly cryptic Christmas gift (pictured above).
Your permit approval will come with a notice telling you to make an appointment to get your residence card (oppholdskort). When you head back to the Immigration Office of Quiet Anxiety, you'll be instructed to use one of their card machines to record your photo, fingerprint, and signature. A few days after that, you'll get your card in the mail.
Now when leave and come back to Norway, you'll be ready when the customs peeps ask you what the hell you're doing in their fine country. So even after you triumphantly yell, "I LIVE HERE, BLAMMO!" while slamming your residence card in front of them, they'll have to let you in. Probably. To be safe, keep the yelling in your head. Don't let the voices out. Never let the voices out.
Now that you've got your residence permit, check out these other services to get the most out of your new life in Norway.
If you have any more questions about getting a Norwegian residence permit or stories to share about your experience getting a permit in another country, let me know! Leave a comment below or email me at roboppy@gmail.com.
]]>[Did I write too many words? Yuuup. Click here to jump straight to the recipe!]
For most of my adult life, I ate out almost every day and reserved cooking for special occasions. It was a perfect marriage of two of my favorite activities: 1) eating and 2) not cooking.
Then I killed that perfect marriage by getting married. After moving from the US to Norway to join my husband Kåre in his home city of Bergen, my eating out and cooking habits flipped. Now instead of treating my kitchen as "the place where I eat snacks over the sink", I treat it as "the place where I cook nearly every day and occasionally eat snacks over the sink." This has less to do with the lack of choices that match up with my cravings and more to do with my current unofficial job title of "freeloading wife/bum," a title that doesn't lend itself to eating out in a country known for being pricey. And I don't mean to complain about the prices—I'd rather pay more if that means people in the food industry can get something called "living wages" (a depressingly foreign idea from an American standpoint)—but it does mean the cost of eating out in Norway compared to in the US makes it more of a treat than a decision I make on the fly because I can't summon the will to dump something in a pot and make it hot.
Over the last two years of living in Bergen, I've dumped a lot of stuff in pots and made the stuff hot. And more! Fueled by a surplus of joblessness and cravings for foodstuffs I can't easily find in Bergen, I've spent hours in the kitchen trying to recreate some of my favorite dishes, as well as squeeze an above-average amount of deliciousness out of each kroner. I make a lot of New York-style pizza (thanks, Kenji!), as well as bacon-topped French toast (thanks, Daniel!), grilled cheese sandwiches (thanks...cheese!), triple batches of white sandwich bread for the aforementioned French toast and grilled cheese sandwiches (thanks, King Arthur!), and other dishes that aren't wheat- or cheese-based. I would never label myself an adept cook, but after lowering my standards I've found myself thinking, "Hm, that tasted not terrible, maybe in the vicinity of good if I squint?" with increasing frequency after taking the first bite of whatever I just made.
(Kåre is far more forgiving when it comes to judging my cooking. He responds to almost everything I cook with "IT'S GOOD, I LIKE FOOD!!!" accompanied by a smile fit for a Golden Retriever, followed by scarfing down two to three normal human servings in five minutes. I'm guessing the main reason he likes everything is because his default hunger level is "I could eat a hippo right now, do you have a hippo, WHY ARE YOU HIDING THE HIPPO." But he's also excessively sweet and would probably compliment me without being guided by intense hunger. A+ husband, also, possibly a dog.)
Out of all the recipes I've tried since moving to Norway in attempts to recreate dishes I've missed in New York or Taipei, this recipe for one of my favorite Chinese desserts, tian dou hua (甜豆花, tián dòu huā), aka sweet tofu custard or soy pudding typically served in a light syrup, is the easiest and most "omggggg this actually tastes like the thing I want it to taste like" dish. Cathy Erway's recipe from her Taiwanese recipe book, The Food of Taiwan, is my favorite kind of recipe, the kind that demands few ingredients and minimal effort, reaching a maximum difficulty level of "dump stuff in a pot and make it hot." To make things even easier for those who don't have access to Asian ingredients, Erway replaced the traditional dou hua coagulant gypsum powder with unflavored gelatin. If the gelatin-enhanced texture is notably different from the traditional recipe, I can't tell. It tastes just as good to me as what I've eaten made by the hands of people who actually have skills. The result is tofu custard with a delicately soft texture that wobbles uncontrollably at the slightest poke and a consistency so light and smooth that it barely tastes like a solid.
And if you don't trust my taste—which I'd totally understand because you shouldn't—maybe you'll trust Lina, one of my best friends in Bergen. Born and raised in China, Lina has been living in Bergen for the last decade or so with her Norwegian husband (and also BFF of mine and Kåre), Petter. During one of their visits to our apartment, I surprised Lina with a batch of homemade dou hua, not having any idea if she actually liked dou hua but making the assumption that, as a Chinese person, she probably did, and as a resident of Bergen, she probably hadn't eaten it in a while. Any doubts I may have had were instantly vaporized when Lina's face lit up at first sight of the wobbly goods. Just as I suspected, she did like dou hua and hadn't eaten it in a long time. What I didn't expect was what she said after taking her first few bites:
"This reminds me of eating dou hua with my mom when I was a kid!"
I'm not saying she had a Ratatouille moment, but it was one of the closest things I've seen to such a moment in real life. And for all the time we've spent together over the last seven-or-so years of being friends, I knew alarmingly little about her life before she moved to France for art school in her mid-20s. Her reaction led to us having a long discussion about her childhood and teenage years in China, a discussion that would've never happened without the catalyst of dou hua. As we sat in my kitchen talking, she ate her way through two bowls of dou hua.
But you don't need treasured childhood memories of dou hua to want to eat a ton of it. I don't. At least, nothing special enough to reveal itself in a food-triggered flashback. (Most of my treasured childhood food memories fall into the categories of "TV dinners" or "chicken nuggets".) I remember eating dou hua more as an adult, with heartwarming memories such as "that time I ate it out of a small take-out bucket in Chinatown," or "that time I ate it out of a larger take-out bucket in another Chinatown." The last time I ate dou hua before I moved to Norway was at Dongmen Jiang Ji Douhua in Taipei, where I ate it out of a normal-sized, non-disposable bowl (but it would've also tasted great out of a bucket).
Even though I no longer live near any Chinatowns, with this recipe I can eat as much dou hua as I want, whenever I want, out of any receptacle I want, like the adult that I questionably am. You too can harness this power. If you try this recipe, let me know what you think!
I use 1 liter of milk because that's the common soy milk carton size in Norway. It's only about a quarter cup more than 1 quart, but in case you're like me and anal about using exact amounts, I figured I'd let you know that using 1 liter of soy milk will not turn your dou hua into garbage soup.
I add a couple of tablespoons of sugar to the (unsweetened) soymilk when I heat it up because I like the hint of sweetness. This isn't necessary considering the tofu custard will ultimately be swimming in ginger syrup, but I personally like the custard better this way. I also add some brown sugar to the syrup to give it a bit o' color.
For those who are using packets of Knox unflavored gelatin, 1 tablespoon is somewhere between 1 and 2 packets.
Reprinted with permission from The Food of Taiwan by Cathy Erway
Makes 4 to 6 servings
For the tofu custard:
1 quart unsweetened or lightly sweetened soy milk
1/2 cup warm water
1 tablespoon unflavored gelatin
For the syrup:
2 cups water
1 (2-inch) piece fresh ginger, peeled and sliced into 8 to 10 thick discs
1/2 cup sugar
For the tofu custard: Heat the soy milk in a large pot over medium-high heat until it just reaches a boil, turning off the heat as soon as the first bubbles emerge around the sides.
In a medium bowl, stir together the warm water and gelatin until the gelatin is thoroughly dissolved. While whisking, slowly pour in about 1 cup of the hot soy milk. Continue whisking and pour in another cup of the soy milk. Transfer the gelatin mixture to the remaining soy milk in the pot and whisk to incorporate thoroughly. Let the soy milk mixture cool completely. Cover and refrigerate for at least 4 hours (or overnight).
For the syrup: Combine the water, ginger, and sugar in a small pot. Bring just to a boil, stirring to dissolve the sugar. Reduce the heat to a simmer and cook, uncovered, until the syrup has reduced and thickened slightly, about 15 minutes. Strain and remove the ginger.
Scoop our large chunks of the chilled tofu custard to serve in individual bowls drizzled with the syrup.
]]>I moved from the US to Norway over two years ago. That means I've spent over 17,000 hours studying the inner workings of Norwegian traditions, habits, languages, and more, information that I then molded into bricks so dense with knowledge that they skirted the edge of gravitational collapse, bricks that I proceeded to lay out with the precision of the most up-to-date robot spine surgeon, resulting in an atomically smooth path of integration into Norwegian societeAHHHAHHAHAHAHA I'm kidding, my "knowledge bricks" are more like rejects from the alphabet block factory where all the vowels are missing, and all the letters are only printed half-way and/or backwards, and some of the blocks are just globs of sawdust-encrusted glue that sort of look like blocks from afar if you close your eyes.
So my integration is going well. Just last week I learned how to refer to the major days of Christmas in Norwegian. Cool! Maybe I should've learned that two Christmases ago when I moved here, but whatever!! Every day is another opportunity to limblessly flop my way up the stairwell of Norwegian competency!!!
For those who are curious about what to call the days of Christmas in Norwegian, I've written this short post listing the names below, plus a bit of info about each day. If you've lived in Norway for a few years and, like me, have only learned these names now, then please, let us share a virtual fist-bump. [bump]
Lille julaften isn't a day of any major activity—it's still a normal work day—except maybe decorating your tree and doing a last-minute hunt for the perfect Christmas gift at Lagunen a few hours before the mall closes not that I'm speaking from experience or anything.
Julaften, which is usually a half-day of work, is the most important day of the Christmas season in Norway. That is, it's the day when most people put on their "good" outfit, meet up with their closest family members for a big dinner of traditional foodstuffs, and open their gifts. If you're wondering how Santa delivers his gifts, he simply goes door-to-door and hand-delivers gifts to children during the evening, as opposed to secretly breaking into people's homes in the depths of the night while the children are asleep.
Første juledag is a full vacation day. It's more relaxing than Christmas Eve, but it's similar in that it can still involve meeting up with close family members and eating a huge-ass dinner, minus the fancy clothes and the gifts.
Andre juledag is another day off from work. Woo!
Romjul is the time between Christmas and New Year's Day. But in my mind it's when Christmas is being celebrated on spaceships with aliens who want to party Earth-style.
And while I'm talking about New Year's...
Nyttårsaften is the night where the people of Bergen (and other cities) go nuts setting off fireworks during the one eight-hour period a year when they're allowed to.
Første nyttårsdag is a day of rest (that is, another vacation day) and, hopefully, not a day when newspapers bear headlines such as, "YOU PARTIED TOO HARD; THE CITY BURNED DOWN".
]]>Do you have Chinese ancestry? Is your knowledge of Mandarin and its dialects as rich as Dickensian gruel? Do you wake up every morning trapped in a prison of shame fortified by your inability to understand the language of your forebears? Do you feel like a complete failure for learning nothing from your Mandarin-speaking parents and relatives, barely worthy of the first half of your hyphenated ethnic-national identity?
If so, then 1) there, there, simmer down (I suggest poking this therapeutic jello mold repeatedly), and 2) you're not hopeless! As a previously hopeless Mandarin learner, I'm here to overconfidently tell you that it's never too late to learn Mandarin and douse those flames of shame with [cue magical twinkly sound] knowledge!
And if the previous paragraph's characteristics do not apply to you, that's cool—you too can learn Mandarin. The lifelong struggle over the fulfillment of one's Chinese identity is not required.
After 29 years of knowing less Mandarin than a fish in a Chinese restaurant's seafood tank, I moved to my parents' birthplace of Taiwan in the summer of 2014 to attend the Mandarin Training Center (aka the MTC, 師大國語教學中心), a non-degree program at Taipei's National Taiwan Normal University (aka Shida, 師大). I saw it as my last chance before getting married to pick up some Mandarin for feeling less like a half-assed person of Chinese descent self-improvement and to learn more about the culture my parents grew up with. Nine months of classes may not have left me anywhere near fluent, but it did crack through my long-held belief that I was immune to learning Mandarin. And the experience showed me that, hell, maybe—just maybe—I could learn other skills if I put my mind to it and didn't waste my life away dicking around on the internet but I have yet to test that theory.
I'm writing this two-part series of posts to document my nine-month experience at the MTC as a monolingual Chinese-American starting from the beginner level. If you're a prospective student who isn't a beginner, parts of my experience won't apply to you. If you're looking for knowledgeable advice from someone who's tried different kinds of Mandarin courses (say, in the US or China) or someone who has a lot of experience learning second languages, get ready to find the opposite of that. But despite my limited experience, I hope my posts can be of some use to prospective Mandarin learners.
Some of the questions in the following FAQ are real questions that people have asked me about my time at the MTC. Some of the questions are ones I made up for the purpose of cramming more info into this post. Which is which? NO ONE SHALL EVER KNOW nor care. What I won't do is go into detail about administrative aspects of the school, like how to apply, descriptions of different courses and facilities, how to do visa-related stuff, or other information you can find on the MTC's website.
Other former MTC students have written detailed accounts of their experiences as well. Here are a few that I think are worth pointing out. They contain a wealth of information that I won't be touching upon in my post:
If you have more questions about the MTC that I haven't covered in this post, ask me in the comments below or email me (roboppy@gmail.com) and I'll try to answer here. For more information about class structure and teaching styles at the MTC, head to part two.
Here's a list of the questions I'll be covering:
I'm not sure I should admit this, but...uh...I chose the MTC largely because it was really close to my dad's apartment where I was living. I wasn't purely driven by laziness—other deciding factors included the school's decades of Mandarin education for foreigners and its mostly good reputation—but there are few perks more enticing than being able to roll out of bed 15 minutes before the start of class and still get to class on time, even after walking up seven or more flights of stairs. (I'm not sure if the stairs were actually faster than taking the elevator, but the building's elevators were often so slow and crowded that the stairs felt faster.)
First off, for those who don't know the difference between regular and intensive, check out this post from lostpig.blogspot.com that gives a rundown of the two types of classes. The main difference is that intensive classes are 15 hours a week, while regular classes are 10 hours a week plus five hours of MTC-approved supplementary classes and studying. As the name implies, the intensive classes get through the material more quickly than the regular classes. Intensive classes complete one textbook each term at a rate of one chapter every three or four days. I'm not sure how much the regular classes cover, but I'd guess it's more like one chapter a week.
I wanted to take intensive classes as soon as I found out they were an option. Knowing that I'd only be at the MTC for nine months as a full-time student without any other responsibilities, I figured the intensive classes would help me squeeze the most out of my time at the MTC. If you're a beginner with limited time in Taiwan, I'd recommend choosing intensive.
Having said that, intensive is not for everyone, especially if you have an inflexible schedule due to work, other classes, or other responsibilities. The regular class may be better suited to your learning style, besides that it would allow you to have a more leisurely lifestyle while living in Taiwan (although I'd say I had a pretty leisurely life with the intensive classes). You may have to try both types of classes to see which one you prefer. I had friends who switched from intensive to regular or vice versa after finding that their first pick wasn't suited for them.
According to the guidelines I was given when I started at the MTC, students in the intensive class need to study at least four hours a day to keep up with the schedule of getting through one textbook each term. This is pretty accurate from my experience, although for me four hours was the high end. I rarely studied more than four hours. Sometimes I'd study closer to three hours. And there were a handful of occasions where I had unknowingly entered a wormhole into a parallel universe where language acquisition was way easier, meaning I didn't receive any homework nor have a test the next day to prepare for. On those days, I usually studied somewhere between zero and zero hours. Of course, not having homework nor tests to prepare for doesn't translate to "no studying required", but to me (and most of my classmates, probably), no homework translated to "AW YEAAAH LET'S DO ABOSLUTELY ANYTHING THAT DOESN'T INVOLVE STUDYING."
As for what those four-ish hours consisted of, it was a mix of memorizing new vocabulary, practicing writing each new character until the cartilage in my right hand rubbed down into a fine dust, doing exercises in the workbook, reviewing the latest lesson in the textbook to prepare for a quiz or test (which teachers gave almost every day—I talk more about this in part two), and doing other homework the teacher may have assigned. The time is easy to fill, but it passes with the speed and comfort of a large kidney stone—at least in the beginning. That's why I developed a crippling dependence on lattes and cute cafes to keep me lucid. Otherwise I probably would've drooled myself to sleep at least twice a day while doing my homework and studying.
Nope! (But you knew that already. Otherwise traditional characters would've died out a long time ago.) I'm not saying it's easy, because it's not, but the perception of its insane difficulty probably makes some people think it's not even worth trying to learn, myself being one of these people before I tried to learn it.
Whether it's worth learning traditional characters is up to you. Before I started at the MTC, I wasn't that interested in being able to read and write characters, traditional or simplified, but the more time I put into learning characters (...a lot of time), the more I grew to appreciate them. The program at the MTC emphasized reading and writing, and I'm grateful for that.
If you're intimidated by characters, let me assure you that after you get over the hurdle of internally wailing "WHY, CHARACTERS, WAAAAIII" with every seemingly excessive, soul-depleting stroke (my wailing period lasted at least one term), learning characters gets easier as time goes on. Besides that muscle memory will eventually kick in, allowing you to semi-automatically write common characters that months before looked like webs of nonsensical scratches, you'll more quickly see links between characters and their meanings as you build your knowledge of radicals.
For Level 1 (and maybe Level 2), your textbook will come with a character workbook that gives you stroke orders and space to practice writing in, but from my experience the MTC doesn't teach you much in the ways of how to learn characters. You'll be assigned which characters to learn, but you need to figure out what works best for you in terms of actually memorizing them. There are a bluhjillion tips online for how to memorize characters.
My method was pretty simple. I practiced writing each character over and over and over again on a small whiteboard, and I tested myself using flashcards in Pleco (the best Chinese dictionary app, as far as I know) until I felt that I had memorized the characters well enough for the next day's character quiz. This may have taken me hours a night in the beginning. Over time, I used the meanings of radicals more and more to memorize characters, and when the radicals alone didn't help me, making up dumb stories about a character usually would. I'm not saying this is the best way to learn characters, but it's one way that worked for me.
You should also consider the Pleco add-on Outlier Chinese Dictionary, a dictionary that better explains the components of common characters than Pleco's other dictionaries. I didn't get to use this dictionary during school because it came out after I left the MTC, but I bought it as soon as I heard about it.
For the purpose of learning at the MTC, you don't need zhuyin fuhao/bopomofo (注音符號), the phonetic symbols used in Taiwan to represent Mandarin pronunciation. The MTC's textbooks featured pinyin and only supplemented the pinyin with zhuyin for new vocabulary. (And after the Level 1 book, the textbooks don't use much pinyin.) My Level 1 teacher gave us a crash course in zhuyin on our first day of class to help introduce Mandarin pronunciation, but after that first day we rarely used zhuyin again.
Personally though, I wanted to get familiar with zhuyin because 1) I think it looks cute (an important factor to consider in any life decision) 2) most Taiwanese people only know zhuyin and not pinyin, and 3) before I got used to pinyin, I thought zhuyin would help me figure out the pronunciations of characters. I found that using pinyin in conjunction with zhuyin in the beginning improved my pronunciation. Additionally, trying to learn zhuyin and pinyin at the same time helped me learn both more quickly than if I had tried to learn each one on its own. This may not work for everyone, but if you're having trouble with pinyin, maybe learning zhuyin will help.
Having said that, today I am pretty bad at zhuyin. I quickly got used to reading pinyin, after which I decreased my zhuyin-learning efforts. The extent of my zhuyin practice these days is using a zhuyin keyboard on my phone to type Mandarin (I recommend Swiftkey), even though I tap the keyboard at the speed of a tranquilized slug. I use pinyin on my computer because I'm not familiar with the zhuyin keyboard and typing pinyin is roughly a billion times faster.
My teachers and classmates! One of the biggest complaints I read about the MTC before I applied was that the teacher quality was inconsistent, ranging from "satisfactory babysitter" to "please adopt me because I love you more than my mother". Luckily, I didn't experience inconsistent teachers, just different teaching styles (which I explain in part two). I liked my three teachers in different ways and I never felt any desire to switch classes. However, some of my friends were less lucky and switched to different classes as soon as they could find an open spot in another class. So a subpar teacher may lie in your future, but it's more likely you'll get a good one.
After teachers, the next most important part of my learning experience was my classmates. It's better to have a great teacher than to have great classmates, but having classmates you can't talk to or feel any desire to hang out with isn't going to boost your morale. As someone who went through most of her secondary and tertiary education with few friends in the same school, I didn't think "cool classmates" would be that important to me until I experienced what it's like to have them. You're going to be stuck in a small room with five to seven other people for three hours, five days a week. If you don't feel vibes of compatibility from day one, that could be a worthwhile reason to switch classes.
Most of my classmates were friendly, hard-working, generous, and surely more amazing than I'd ever get to know in the short time we had together. They also made for the most diverse classes I had ever been in, hailing from Guatemala, India, Germany, Honduras, South Korea, Japan, Thailand, Indonesia, and Mexico. Over my three terms, I only had two classmates from the US. I count diversity as a huge plus to my MTC experience.
An easy way to connect with your classmates is to create a Facebook group for your class and/or a LINE chat group early in the term. (This is assuming that LINE is still the king of chat apps in Taiwan like it was in 2015.) If you're shy like me and you hate taking charge of anything social, too bad—you might have to take charge if you don't want to fetal-position your way into a dark corner of loneliness. Sure, not every classmate is going to want to do this (and maybe that classmate is you), but this tactic worked pretty well in my first two terms as far as helping me keep in touch with my classmates in case we had questions about homework or wanted to get together to eat or go sightseeing.
(If right now you're thinking, "Robyn, I've already gone through puberty and I know how socializing works," I'm one of the clueless ones who doesn't have the best track record when it comes to making friends in real life. For those of you who are in the same boat and prone to crashing such a boat, my tips are for you.)
I wasn't a fan of the MTC's textbook series, A Course in Contemporary Chinese. I happened to enroll around the same time as when the school switched to trial versions of this new, updated series of textbooks. On the plus side, I got a book with more up-to-date information than the previously used book (I assume—I hadn't seen the previous book). On the downside, my classmates are I were guinea pigs for their new series of books that was still in the embryonic stage, with features such as bare-bones formatting, all the colors of the black and white rainbow, illustrations that hinted at an anemic art budget, a smattering of spelling errors, and explanations of grammar that increasingly confused more than explained. (On retrospect, I should've read this Chinese Grammar Wiki instead of trying to decipher the book's explanations.) The further I got into Book 1, the more it appeared to be slowly succumbing to a stroke. Books 2 and 3 didn't fare much better.
Having given that less than glowing review, I did like most of the material the books covered and the way the levels progressed. It's just that getting the trial version of each textbook instead of the final polished version diminished the learning experience a bit. Most teachers didn't seem to be fans of the book either.
But my complains are irrelevant now. Anyone starting at the MTC today would be getting the new version of the textbook series. So assuming the latest version doesn't suck, new students shouldn't have a problem with the textbooks. If the books are still sub-par, I'd assume they're at least better than what I used. For those who are curious, you can view sample pages of the textbooks at books.com.tw: Book 1, Book 2, Book 3, Book 4.
Another part of the course that was lacking was getting enough practice speaking (although this has been a problem in pretty much every secondary language class I've ever taken). If you want to get more speaking practice, you need to find local people to talk to—Taiwanese friends, language exchange partners, the old grandpa dude who lives down the street, etc. I didn't try hard enough to practice Mandarin with native speakers when I lived in Taiwan, and that's my fault.
If you want a language exchange partner but don't know where to begin, check out the bulletin board on the 7th floor in the MTC. It'll probably be covered in flyers from people requesting partners. Personally, I found some of my partners through totally unexpected ways—one through Instagram, another through my hairdresser, another through one of my dad's English students. There's no shortage of Taiwanese people who want to practice English or other languages.
Taking supplementary culture classes at the MTC [PDF] might also give you more opportunities to practice speaking and listening in a more relaxed setting depending on what class you choose. I can tell you from experience that the Chinese brush painting class is the completely wrong class to choose for such a purpose (it was, perhaps, the quietest class I had ever taken). However, I heard good things about the cooking class in terms of getting delicious foodstuffs (I got to eat my friend's leftovers, score!), learning cooking vocabulary, and having fun.
One last little thing I'm going to mention here because I don't know where else to put it is that Chinese uses an extra type of comma called the enumeration comma. It took me way too long to figure out that the enumeration comma is used differently from a regular comma and is not, as I had called it for months, "a weird-ass comma".
From my experience, if you're a beginner and you want to set the groundwork for learning Mandarin, I'd recommend you take classes for at least six months (two terms), but ideally more. I took classes for nine months (three terms), but I wish I had had the time to take classes for a year. Of course, if you only have the time or funds to attend for three months (one term), that's better than nothing—it just won't get you that far. Although some people might be able to crush Mandarin in three months, I was certainly not driven enough to do that.
This PDF from the MTC's school bulletin breaks down the MTC's terms and what learning objectives you'll fulfill each term if you're starting as a beginner. If I use CEFR levels as a guide and apply the pace of intensive classes, you'll get through A1 after three months, A2 after sixth months, and part of B1 after nine months, learning about 500 characters each term. This means, in theory, you'll learn about 1500 characters after nine months. In reality, you'll forget a good deal of them if you don't continue your studies, just like meeeeeugh.
I was satisfied with my reading and writing abilities after nine months of classes, less satisfied with my listening and speaking abilities. As I mentioned in my previous section, you need to find outside sources to practice speaking in real-life situations. I'm not saying my listening and speaking abilities were complete trash, but they should've been better. This was evident when I went to the post office to buy a bunch of stamps shortly before I moved back to the US. I was more confident than usual, thinking, "I PREPARED FOR THIS. I DID SCHOOL. I CAN DO WORDS." Then I tried words. They mostly failed. The clerk and I resorted to writing numbers on post-its and using hand gestures to figure out what I wanted to buy. It was not a proud moment to end my third term with.
Yup! There are a few scholarships listed on MTC's website. I didn't apply for any scholarships, but as some of my friends at the MTC were on the Huayu Enrichment Scholarship (HES), I'd recommend starting with that one. You can check out the scholarship's details here (note that the 2017 application period is over). The scholarship grants a stipend of NT$25,000 per month and is open to US citizens who have graduated high school.
If you want an official piece of paper that reinforces that your time at the MTC wasn't a complete waste or you're curious to see how you stack up against other students, you should take the TOCFL (Test of Chinese as a Foreign Language). The program at the MTC doesn't give you any sort of official certificate or diploma that say what standardized level of Mandarin you have reached. (What they do provide are certificates of enrollment and transcripts, which you need for extending your visa.) I hadn't originally planned on taking the TOCFL since I didn't need proof of competency, but I ended up taking the test twice for reasons I'll explain below.
When I took the test in 2015, the fee to take the test was between NT$1600 and NT$2000. My first test cost NT$1440, including a school discount. My second test was NT$2000—no discount was offered. I only did the listening and reading test, not the speaking or writing test.
Check the schedule on TOCFL's website and make note of the registration dates. You should register as soon as possible to get the best spot. I took my tests at the University of Education, which isn't that far from Shida. Seats at Shida fill up quickly—I'd assume they're the first to go when it comes to picking a test spot in Taipei. If you wait too long to register, you might have to travel to another city to take the test.
After you finish Book 2, you should have no problem passing Band A, Level 2, as I did after the first time I took the TOCFL. I had only planned on taking the test once, but that changed when I found out that the committee that administers the test had added another official TOCFL session a few weeks later. By that point, I would have been finished with book three. (This extra test was not available in 2016, nor is it available this year; I don't know what happened back in 2015 that led to the extra test.) I decided to try for the next TOCFL level and potentially waste NT$2000 in the process. Thanks to fortuitous guessing (so much guessing), I managed to squeeze out a passing grade at Band B, Level 3. By the time you finish Book 3 you should be able to pass Level 3 without much problem—most of my classmates did—but my Mandarin-learning stamina was so shot by the end of my third term that I'm sure I only passed Level 3 because of dumb luck.
Unless Christmas lands on the weekend, nope. It's just any regular ol' day, except with a greater-than-average percentage of students feeling homesick. Knowing this, the MTC tries to bring some Christmas joy into the mix. A few days before Christmas in 2014, they gave out cookies and held some sort of contest involving posting a photo to Facebook with one of the MTC's holiday-themed backgrounds.
There was also someone wearing an alternate-dimension Sulley costume to spread Christmas joy or something.
My class celebrated Christmas by sharing gifts Secret Santa-style and bringing in snacks for everyone to share. (I brought my favorite pineapple cakes, of course.) If you and your classmates are particularly close, your class might do this too.
The Chinese and Taiwanese ones! :D Besides the biggest holiday, Chinese New Year, you also get days off for Mid-Autumn Festival (中秋節), Double Ten Day (Taiwan's National Day, 國慶日), and Tomb Sweeping Day (清明節). View the full academic calendar at the MTC's website.
Due to the way certain holidays fall, you may end up with a few days of classes stuck between two periods of vacation days. If this happens, your teacher may suggest a way to redistribute those in-between days to other days so you can have an uninterrupted vacation. If your teacher doesn't suggest it, then you should suggest it. (It's not like your teacher would say no to a longer vacation.) If it works for everyone's schedules and there's classroom space, then you should be good to go. My Term 2 and Term 3 classes did this. I think the work-around was having a few four-hour classes and six-hour classes (with a lunch break in between) instead of the regular three-hour classes.
That's the end of this FAQ! Head to part two for more info. If anyone has more questions, please ask in the comment section below!
]]>This is my second post about my experience learning Mandarin at the Mandarin Training Center (aka the MTC, 師大國語教學中心) in Taipei from 2014 to 2015. In part one, I gave some background information about why I wanted to learn Mandarin at the MTC and I answered random questions about my experience at the school. In this post, I'll focus on describing general teaching and testing methods at the MTC and how each of my three teachers conducted their classes. (Keep in mind that my experience reflects the intensive classes, not the regular classes.) I won't touch upon the learning objectives or material of each term. For more info on that, check out this PDF from the MTC's website.
The teacher's responsibility is to cover the material in the textbook and prepare students for the level-wide final at the end of the term. How they teach the material is up to them. Judging from the three teachers I had and feedback from friends in other classes, every teacher has their own style. Some teachers are better than others, although I'd imagine that there are more good teachers than not. In the beginning of each term, you can switch to a different class if you don't like the one you're assigned. Some of my friends did this because their teachers or classmates were lackluster or otherwise not a good fit. I never felt compelled to switch my classes, but I heard it's quite common to do.
No matter what teacher you have, you'll be taking a lot of tingxies (聽寫, tīngxiě), aka dictation tests. During a tingxie, the teacher recites words, phrases, or sentences while you write down the characters, possibly with pinyin and tone marks depending on the teacher's requirements. You'll have a tingxie almost every day to test whether or not you thoroughly crammed those five to 15 new characters into your brain the night before. Without tingxies, I would've never studied as hard as I did.
Besides the daily-ish tingxie, you'll be tested at the end of each chapter. My teachers usually gave a chapter test every four or five school days. The teachers make up their own tests, so I imagine they can vary quite a bit between classes within the same level.
There's an accompanying workbook and CD for each textbook. I would assume that every teacher assigns the workbook assignments to their students like mine did, but perhaps in different ways. Some teachers may go over the exercises in class while others don't. Some teachers may assign extra work while others only use the workbook. I've also heard of teachers using workbook assignments as chapter tests. In my case, I was assigned the workbook exercises as homework each term.
At the end of each term you'll be assigned a final presentation project that will be filmed and given to you on a CD for your future enjoyment/embarrassment. For examples, here are the presentation topics I chose, all based on guiding topics my teachers had assigned: Taipei vs. NYC (Term 1), My Life in Taipei (Term 2), and An Introduction to the US (Term 3). I'm not sure what kind of liberty the teachers get with these topics or if most teachers do similar stuff.
Each term you may or may not take a class field trip—it's up to the teacher and your class's schedule. My first two teachers took our classes on field trips, but my third one didn't.
A few weeks before the end of each term, you'll take a final test that is the same for all students who have covered the same material. The score you get on this test determines your placement for the next term—that is, whether you'll continue to the next level or have to redo a few chapters before you can move on. I don't remember what the grade cut-offs are, but the C I scraped by with on my Level 3 final would've allowed me to continue to Book 4 in the following term, had I stayed at the MTC. (I managed to get Bs on my finals from Level 1 and 2. I think near the end of Level 3, I was feeling burnt out after nearly nine months of classes, especially since I knew it was my last term.)
As for what happens during those last few weeks after the final until the end of the term, they're just like normal classes—you'll cover a few more chapters of the book—except with most students feeling less motivated because the final is already over. Or if not most students, me. The material from those last chapters generally flew straight through my brain, ultimately landing on the forever-growing heap of "Characters I Should Know But I Don't".
In the next three sections, I'll talk about my teachers and what their teaching styles were like. (But if you're looking for a TL;DR, here you go: I liked all my teachers!) I'll refer to each teacher as laoshi, which is just Mandarin for "teacher" (老師, lǎoshī).
I feel incredibly lucky to have had Guan Laoshi as my first teacher at the MTC. She was one of the most exceptionally enthusiastic and energetic teachers I had ever had. Those traits provided crucial support when it came to keeping up my will to live spend hours each night memorizing handfuls of new characters and suppressing my violent rage towards characters that I didn't think made any sense.
For someone decades older than her students, Guan Laoshi and her seemingly superhuman energy level made me feel even more like a waste of youth than I already felt. She was sweet, funny, motherly, and sometimes a little odd, like the eccentric Chinese auntie I never had. She displayed a real passion about teaching and making sure her students succeeded.
My class didn't test the boundaries of what she was willing to teach us, but my impression was that she was open to anything. At least once she broke out in laughter because someone mispronounced a word in a way that it sounded like another word that meant "shit". Alas, I don't remember what the word was. I'll pretend that's for the best.
Guan Laoshi was particularly focused on good pronunciation. She clearly explained and demonstrated how to pronounce the sounds we had difficulty with, and considering each person in our class had a different mother tongue, we probably all had different problem areas. She would also test us on how well we could recite dialogues in the book from memory for the speaking part of her chapter tests. I wasn't a fan of this method at first, but after a while I found that practicing the dialogues by myself or with classmates did make a noticeable impact. Sentence structures, tones, and words became more natural. This may seem like an obvious exercise to improve one's Mandarin (or any language), but it's not the kind of thing I would practice on my own without it being on a test.
For better or worse, Guan Laoshi usually spoke English to us when giving explanations. This makes sense considering that we were sub-kindergarteners who wouldn't be able to understand explanations in Mandarin, but it must have been tough for my one classmate who wasn't fluent in English. On the upside, if you need something explained in English, Guan Laoshi will definitely be able to help you. And I'll note that her frequent use of English is probably limited to Level 1 classes. When Guan Laoshi took my class and her Level 4 class on a field trip together, one of my friends in her Level 4 class remarked that it was the first time he had ever heard her speak English. I imagine that with her fun, sociable attitude, she must've be a great teacher to have in Level 4.
As for that field trip, Guan Laoshi took us to two places in New Taipei City: Yehliu Geopark, home of the famed but eroding Queens Head rock formation, and Juming Museum, a mostly outdoor sculpture park displaying the works of Taiwanese sculpture artist Ju Ming. If you're looking for worthwhile day-trips out of Taipei, put these on your list. I don't have much of a better description of the trip than IT WAS AAWESSOOOOME. It certainly helped develop comradery among my classmates and an appreciation for Taiwan's nature and art early on in my studies.
Lin Laoshi was a great teacher when it came to balancing increasingly difficult class material with having fun (or at least not being totally bored and lost), as well as giving good practice in both speaking/listening and reading/writing. Like Guan Laoshi, Lin Laoshi was also fun, enthusiastic, and energetic, just less eccentric (or maybe she was eccentric and we just didn't know it). She showed a great deal of enthusiasm for teaching as well as concern over whether we understood the material or not.
But a huge difference from Guan Laoshi (or Level 1, to be more fair) became apparent from the beginning of my first class: Lin Laoshi spoke to us in Mandarin 99 percent of the time. Considering I had just spend three months in an English-heavy class, that first day with Lin Laoshi sent me (and probably all my classmates) into a quiet panic. I remember spending much of that first class with a feigned look of comprehension as I mentally hyperventilated all the confidence out of my pores.
However, it wasn't long after the first class that I actually could understand most of what she was saying. IT FELT LIKE MAGIC. Or knowledge acquisition. And during those few times when the magic ran out and my classmates and I were as confused as these puppies, Lin Laoshi would switch to English.
One of my favorite things about Lin Laoshi's class was that we played games! ...Or at least one game, a vocabulary review flashcard game that was sort of like Taboo without the taboo words. As the term progressed and our vocabulary grew, the game became more fun. It also became more competitive as we gradually switched from treating each other like classmates and more like siblings, unafraid to draw each other's blood. (My classmates were super cool. I still miss them.)
We also often did cooperative speaking and writing exercises in pairs, which was an enjoyable-enough and effective way to force use to write on the spot and discuss in Mandarin with each other.
I also liked the way Lin Laoshi conducted the speaking part of her chapter tests. After giving us time to think about a topic she wrote on the test, she'd call on us individually to come outside the classroom and discuss our answers as everyone else worked on the written part of the test.
For our field trip, we joined Lin Laoshi's other class and stayed within the city limits, visiting Confucious Temple (孔廟) and the neighboring Bao'an Temple (保安宮). We ended with a dumpling-making session at Midori House (米多麗小館), a restaurant near Taida that I believe was run by Lin Laoshi's sister. I regret I didn't go back to the restaurant to try their regular menu (which, as far as I can tell, does not contain dumplings). Judging from this review, they make simple curry rice plates and vegetable-heavy rice bowls, which are some of my favorite kinds of food.
When I start a new class, I wonder about the usual things, like What will my new classmates be like? or How difficult will the course work be? In Wang Laoshi's case, another question overshadowed the others: How different will Wang Laoshi be from my first two teachers?
I'm embarrassed to admit that I only asked myself this question because of one difference between Wang Laoshi and my first two teachers: He's a "he". This shouldn't be anything worth noting, but in a school where the women-to-men faculty ratio overwhelmingly leans towards women, it sort of is. Out of the 158 teachers currently listed on the MTC's faculty roster, I only counted about ten men, or about six percent of the faculty. In real life, I had noticed maybe one male teacher in the hallways during my first six months at the MTC. Without realizing it, I had gotten used to the feeling of being surrounded by exuberant, motherly aunties.
Anyway, back to that question. How different was Wang Laoshi from my first two teachers? I wouldn't place him in the "exuberant, motherly auntie" category, but I'd say his teaching styling still came with the care, attention, and enthusiasm I had gotten from my previous teachers, just shown in different ways. If Guan Laoshi and Lin Laoshi were cones of vanilla soft serve covered in rainbow sprinkles, Wang Laoshi was a cone of vanilla soft serve with rainbow sprinkles hidden in the middle. (I know that's not a thing, but pretend it's a thing.) Examples of these more slowly revealed "sprinkles" include the time he showed us a slideshow of photos of his cat for reasons I can't recall (not that anyone needs a reason to show off their cat—I ACCEPT CAT PHOTOS 24/7) and the time he demonstrated that, if need be, he could protect us from a pack of ninjas (or perhaps I should refer to them by their Mandarin name, rěnzhě 忍者).
Like me and probably most of the other students and teachers, Wang Laoshi wasn't a big fan of our textbook. So to supplement the book, he wrote up his own handouts to better explain each chapter's new vocabulary and grammar. In conjunction with these handouts, he also assigned us extra writing exercises using each chapter's new vocabulary and grammar, exercises that I'm sure boosted my writing skills.
Wang Laoshi was very thorough when explaining new material, sometimes more than he had to be. If words alone weren't enough, he'd find YouTube videos or other websites to help illustrate whatever we were learning about. He'd use English to help clarify something if necessary, but otherwise he spoke Mandarin 99.99 percent of the time.
Wang Laoshi would sometimes conduct listening exercises where he'd read a passage aloud and then ask us true or false questions about the contents of the passage. Even though these exercises made me feel like an idiot (my listening comprehension is pretty shitty), I kind of liked them. He also used this type of exercise as the listening part of his chapter tests.
We didn't play games nor do cooperative writing/spoken exercises in class like in Lin Laoshi's class, instead focusing more on using new vocabulary and grammar on the spot, having class discussions, and reading aloud. Having discussions of any substance would've been more difficult at Level 2, as well as reading textbook passages aloud at a pace that wasn't ridden with brainfarts, but at Level 3 these kinds of activities were more suitable.
Unfortunately, we fell behind on our original schedule and didn't have time to go on a field trip. So our "field trip" consisted of walking to the elevator bank on the 8th floor to watch Wang Laoshi give us an intense kung fu demonstration. And thus we learned never to mess with Wang Laoshi. :D Even if it wasn't a field trip, it still got the job done as far as entertaining us and showing us a part of Chinese culture.
So that's my experience at the MTC in a two-post nutshell. Although I don't know how the MTC compares to other Mandarin schools, I wouldn't hesitate to recommend it to anyone who wants to learn Mandarin in a sufficiently-intense-but-not-soul-killing environment. Not only will you learn a lot quickly, you'll get to do it in one of the best cities in the world. And if you're as lucky as I was, your time at the MTC will enrich your life in ways no other place could. Thanks to the MTC, I made friendships that will last to the grave (you know who you are, [creepy voice] special grave friends [/creepy voice]), developed a deeper love for Taiwan than I could ever get from short family vacations, and briefly rekindled the kind of confidence I lost a long time ago, the kind that says, "Hey, you have the ability to learn new stuff! You're not dead yet! Why do I even have to tell you this?"
Oh yeah, and I can finally talk to my parents in their mother tongue! Talk like a four-year-old, perhaps, but still! I tried it a few times in brief spurts. It turns out my parents prefer to talk to me in English. Cool.
]]>"Indigestion or Heartbreak?" isn't a guessing game that I often play. My heart's quite intact and, surprisingly after all these years of forgetting that feeling full is a signal to stop eating, so is my digestive system. But something in my gut did feel a bit sloshy today, perhaps due to off-meat, perhaps due to sympathetically joining the sea of diner lovers' hearts that broke after yesterday's news that Cup & Saucer, an old-school diner that has been a fixture of Chinatown and the Lower East Side for decades, will be closing next Monday, July 17.
New York-based blogs quickly crowded the lamentation train, and for good reason. Cup & Saucer—its employees, décor, and food—radiates with greasy spoon charm and warmth that terribly few other places could measure up to. Newer places just can't embody the kind of history it has. Owners John Vasilopoulos and Nick Castanos have been running this sliver of a diner on the corner of Canal and Elridge streets since 1988. They didn't change the name nor the signs when they took it over—it's been Cup & Saucer since 1940.
]]>This latest addition to New York's vanishing diner culture is brought to you by increasing rents. According to The Lo-Down, the restaurant's rent would have been increased to $15,000 per month including real estate taxes. The owners of Cup and Saucer must have seen this coming for years—their worries about a steep rent increase is mentioned in this 2013 article from The Lo-Down—but for people like me who too casually visited Cup & Saucer and too carelessly forgot that nothing in New York is permanent, suddenly hearing about its closure was an unexpected punch to the gut.
I don't know if I deserve to be so upset about Cup & Saucer's closing. I'm ashamed to say that I only ate there three times during my decade-plus of living in New York. My first visit was in 2013 with my friend Max when I reviewed their burger for Serious Eats and Max reviewed their Fish on a Bun. After that, I went back a grand total of two more times, but considering how often Max and I talked about the place, it feels like I went more. I moved out of New York in the summer of 2014, and I haven't been back to the restaurant since.
(I was actually in New York this past May for one day, a too-short stop on a packed trip to a handful of cities on the East Coast. At my request, my friends and I hung out in Chinatown for a few hours. And at my request, we spent a chunk of our time drinking bubble tea. We drank bubble tea when WE COULD'VE BEEN PAYING OUR LAST RESPECTS AT CUP & SAUCER, BASKING IN THE GLOW OF BREAKFAST PLATES DRAPED IN BACON AND MUGS OF ENDLESS COFFEE. I chose "gnawing on tapioca balls" over that. What have I done.)
For better words and photos about Cup & Saucer than I can provide, check out Max Rovo's feature of the restaurant on The Lo-Down, Karla Murray's post on James and Karla Murray Photography, and this interview with co-owner Nick Castanos on Convicts.
If you get the chance to visit Cup & Saucer before it closes in a few days, I hope you take it (and let me know how it is!). For the rest of us, here are some more photos I've taken, plus a scan of the menu to remember the diner by.
89 Canal St, New York, NY 10002, USA (map)
According to Google, these are the opening hours:
Fri: 6 a.m. - 5 p.m.
Sat: 6 a.m. - 3 p.m.
Sun: 7 a.m. - 3:30 p.m.
Mon: 6 a.m. - 5 p.m.
Behold, the redesign that no one asked for!
After over ten years of using the same increasingly shitty design for this blog, I decided to give my blog a face-lift. And by "lift" I mean I shoved its face into a belt sander until every nook, cranny, and pore was shaved off, and then I gave it a new face. Whereas the old design made me think, "If I update this blog, I'll be propagating this shitty design and making the internet an uglier place," this new design will, I hope, inspire me to write on a regular basis.
And if that doesn't work, well. I'LL GO OUT IN A BLAZE OF GLORY AS I BURN MY BLOG TO THE GROUND.
Anyway, I'm still tweaking this design, meaning that there are surely template and style errors hidden throughout this site, especially when viewed in different browsers and devices. I'm not aiming for design perfection, but if you see anything that looks like my blog came out the wrong end of a diseased internet colon, please leave a comment below or drop me an email (roboppy@gmail.com). Thanks!
I'll work on new posts now, FOR REEEAALLL.
]]>Throughout March, many of the podcasts I listen to promoted Trypod, a podcast awareness campaign encouraging listeners to recommend podcasts to friends and family who may not be familiar with podcasts. I figured I would take this opportunity to talk about some of my favorite podcasts and simultaneously expose what a jobless bum like me does with the many hours of free time that come with being an unproductive member of society.
Besides the hours I spend going to Norwegian class, watching TV shows, staring at my dream dog, rewriting blog posts that never come to fruition, and playing Super Mario Run, I spend most of my waking hours in my kitchen mangling ingredients and attempting to make them edible. Sometimes I call it "cooking." I also call it my podcast-listening time. And because I prep food at the pace of a one-armed sloth whose arm has fallen asleep, I have a loooot of podcast-listening time.
If you're looking for a good podcast player, I recommend Pocket Casts. I've been using the $9 web version of the player since last fall to manage my 60-something podcast subscriptions (many of which I have yet to listen to but plan to get to before I die, assuming I'm not going to die soon). I only listen to podcasts on my computer, but if I listened to podcasts on my phone, I'd buy the mobile app as well.
Here's a list of 16 podcasts I've particularly enjoyed in March (and have had new episodes in March), plus some info about each podcast. If you have other recommendations, please let me know in the comments!
]]> S-Town: This new podcast hosted by Brian Reed is the latest show from the people behind Serial and This American Life. I wouldn't normally recommend a podcast without saying what it's about, but in this case I think the less you know before you listen to it, the better. If you like Serial and TAL, you'll probably like this too. If you've never listened to Serial or TAL before, you should check them out as well (with TAL, start in the "Favorites" section of their website). All seven episodes of S-Town were released on March 28, so if you like what you hear, you can binge the whole show in one go. I finished it in three days.A Way With Words: Author Martha Barnette and dictionary editor Grant Barrett host this fun show about words, idioms, slang, grammar, and more guided by language-related questions and anecdotes from listeners.
BackStory: On this show, U.S. historians Ed Ayers, Brian Balogh, Nathan Connolly, and Joanne Freeman discuss American history through topics related to current news. It's roughly five bajillion times more interesting than the U.S. History classes I took in high school.
99% Invisible: This podcast is mostly about the stories behind everyday design and architecture from the past and the present, things you may have seen before but never really wondered about. I first started listening to 99% Invisible after watching host Roman Mars's Ted Talk about good vs. shitty flag design. If you didn't think you cared about flags before, you will after watching that video.
Twenty Thousand Hertz: Like 99% Invisible, this podcast hosted by Dallas Taylor illuminates design in everyday life, but focuses on sounds—the iconic NBC chimes, the different sounds a car makes, the components of a movie soundtrack, and more. These episodes are in the shorter side, mostly 10-15 minutes long.
Criminal: Some time ago I had found a list of recommendations for crime-related podcasts and intended to try a handful of them out, but after listening to this podcast hosted by Phoebe Judge, I didn't feel like I had to try any others.
Adam Ruins Everything: If you've seen clips of Adam Ruins Everything on YouTube, you know each episode features an expert to help debunk the episode's featured topic who talks for roughly five seconds before disappearing to make room for something flashier. If you've thought, "I'd like to hear that expert talk for more than five seconds," that's what this podcast is for. Host Adam Conover's casual interviews clock in closer to an hour with seemingly little editing.
Planet Money: For someone like me who doesn't have much aptitude for or understanding of economics, this long-running podcast makes economics more accessible and interesting. Most episodes of Planet Money are fairly short (about 20 minutes long) stand-alone episodes, but there are two series that I want to point out: Planet Money makes a T-shirt and Planet Money buys oil.
Science Vs: In this fun podcast, host and science journalist Wendy Zukerman uses good ol' science to investigate topics of debate like gun control, organic food, immigration, and climate change.
Embedded: As the name suggests, in each episode host Kelly McEvers goes deep into a story from the news. The latest episodes are packaged together as a series on police videos, while previous episodes go into a variety of unconnected news stories: gang killings in El Salvador, an HIV outbreak in small-town Indiana, what it's like to play on a D-League basketball team, and more.
Throwing Shade: "Comedians Erin Gibson and Bryan Safi take a weekly look at all the issues important to ladies and gays...and treat them with much less respect than they deserve." The podcast's own description is better than what I could come up with, so there ya go. I first became familiar with Gibson and Safi back when they were hosts on InfoMania (2007 - 2011, RIP [SOB]). I only found out last month that they've had a podcast...for the last five years. They also started a talk show this year with the same name, but I have yet to watch it.
The Daily: Five days a week, this podcast from The New York Times hosted by Michael Barbaro features a handful of current NYT news stories in neatly packaged ~20-minute episodes.
They Call Us Bruce: Hear about what's happening in Asian America through casual conversations with hosts Phil Yu, the blogger behind Angry Asian Man, and Jeff Yang, a journalist with decades of experience as a professional commentator on Asian American issues but might be better known to some as the father of the kid who plays Eddie on "Fresh Off the Boat." They just started this podcast less than two weeks ago so there are only a few episodes so far. I'm looking forward to hearing more.
Missing Richard Simmons: If you're like me, you've never cared about Richard Simmons in any particular way, nor did you know he went "missing" from the public eye a few years ago. Thanks to host Dan Taberski's search for Simmons, I now care more. With just six episodes, this is an easy-to-binge podcast.
Auralnauts Podcast: This is an intermittent podcast from the duo behind one of my favorite YouTube channels, Auralnauts (a channel I've mentioned before on this blog). In their podcast, Zac and Craven talk about how they make their videos and music, recommend movies they've enjoyed lately, answer fan questions, and talk about whatever else they feel like.
The Cracked Podcast: The audio extension of Cracked.com hosted by Jack O'Brien and Michael Swaim features long discussions and interviews about random things related to pop culture, current events, and history. It's usually funny and sometimes serious.
]]>I'm getting tired of Taipei. Where can I go for a fun day-trip out of the city?
[Whips head up from desk, blinks a few times with the finesse of someone who has just learned what eyelids do, smears a dribble of drool—a drooble—off of bottom left corner of mouth.]
You've come to the right place! As you can see [blindly slaps palms around desk looking for glasses], I am a totally professional human who is equipped to help you!
[Finds glasses, smushes them onto face. Scoots closer to computer, which in turn gets me closer to you, Imaginary Person That I Made Up So I Can Pretend I'm Not Just Talking To Myself.]
Do you love cats? Spend a day in Houtong, a village full of cats! Do you love Spirited Away? Head to Jiufen, the mountain village that looks like it influenced the movie, so who cares if Miyazaki says it didn't! Do you love rock formations that vaguely resemble the eroding heads of 16th-century British monarchs? Yehliu's got your weirdly specific interest covered! (At least until the next big earthquake or typhoon.)
Eh, thanks for the suggestions, but I'm not really into any of those things.
[Scoots back.]
Hey, I like stuff! I like...
...[waits, unblinkingly]...
...sky fires?
Well, why didn't you say that first? Just head to Pingxi! It's got sky fires galore!
Pingxi, a rural district nestled among the mountains just an hour east of Taipei, attracts locals and tourists all year round who want to release flame-powered lanterns bearing their personalized wishes into the sky. Why Pingxi? According to the internet, Pingxi is uniquely situated to sort of safely handle floating fireballs enclosed in wire- or bamboo-framed paper cages due to its location in a rainy mountainous area with steady wind patterns. If you want to set off a sky lantern, Pingxi appears to be the only legal place in Taiwan you can do it.
]]>That sounds great, but what I'd REALLY love is to maximize my exposure to floating fireballs and hoards of people. I've also got a thing for logistical nightmares. Is there a certain time of the year where these conditions are optimal?
Hell yes, a certainty as unwavering as this dog's rabid joy while playing fetch with a ball 15 times larger than his head. If you find everyday crowds too relaxing and navigable, then the annual Pingxi Sky Lantern Festival (平溪天燈節, píngxī tiāndēng jié) is for you—you and some tens of thousands of other people. The festival's claim to fame is its group lantern releases that illuminate the night sky with hundreds of glowing lanterns flying in unison, like that scene from Tangled except without the castle and the boats and the singing and the magic.
The festival usually takes place sometime between January and March on the day of the Lantern Festival (元宵節, yuánxiāo jié), the holiday that marks the end of the Chinese New Year (春節, chūnjié) season. However, in recent years (or beyond recent, but I only looked up the last few years) the festival had been held multiple times during the Chinese New Year season, perhaps to better manage crowds and take advantage of increasing tourism. This year's 2017 Pingxi Sky Lantern Festival has gone a different route. It was held only once during the Chinese New Year season on February 11, but there will be a second festival date later this year on October 4 to celebrate the Mid-Autumn Festival.
Thousands upon thousands of people streaming into a rural mountain district with fewer than 5,000 residents actually isn't as big of a logistical nightmare as one may expect. Either that or my friends and I got lucky. On March 5, 2015, I headed to the festival in the early afternoon, along with my husband Kåre and our friend Pamela. There we would meet up with our friends Charlotte and Stephanie, who had headed to Pingxi in the morning to squeeze in a pre-festival hike. (You can do it too! Check out the Sandiaoling Waterfall Trail.) The transportation authorities prepare for the festival crowds by restricting car and motorcycle access near Pingxi on the day of the festival, meaning the only way to get in is by bus, train, or a combination of the two. Kåre, Pamela, and I took one of the shuttle buses provided for the festival near the Taipei City Zoo metro stop. To our surprise, we waited a negligible amount of time and had no problem getting seats on the bus. After about an hour of rolling past the verdant mountains of eastern New Taipei City, the bus dropped us off near Nanshan Bridge in Shifen.
As far as I can tell, Shifen—one of twelve villages in the Pingxi district—is usually the site of the Pingxi Sky Lantern Festival. However, when the festival is scheduled to take place on more than one day, the location changes with each day. For example, in 2015 the festival also took place in Jingtong and the village of Pingxi, in addition to Shifen. This year the festival that occurred on February 11 took place in Shifen, while the next festival date on October 4 will be held in Jingtong, according to the festival's official website. I assume the organizers could expand the dates and locations in the future. If you plan on attending, make sure to pay attention to the dates and locations so you end up in the right place.
Preparations were well underway when we arrived at the Shifen tourist center in the mid-afternoon. Workers and organizers were lugging around tall stacks of lanterns and getting them ready for the evening's main event.
Red lanterns are the traditional and popular choice, but if red isn't your thing you can choose other colors ascribed to arbitrary categories of luck. According to the completely scientific chart above, green would actually be the best choice because it means "All wishes come true." Red merely means "health." That seems like a bit of a rip-off compared to getting all your wishes fulfilled.
The train tracks that run through Shifen Old Street is where most of the individual lantern-releasing action happens. The tracks are flanked with lantern vendors and metal racks that hold up the lanterns so people can paint on their messages. Walking along the street is a good opportunity to spy on other people's most heartfelt wishes and dreams, the messages they deemed worthy of ascribing to this possibly once-in-a-lifetime experience.
Remember kids: Anything you do in public can end up on the internet.
The train track is active, by the way. But no worries—visitors and locals are adept at evading dismemberment/death, stepping about a centimeter into the safe zone while keeping their phones and cameras raised. As soon as the train passes, the tracks return to their natural state of being filled with people, the way God intended.
Here's a video shot by Kåre to give you a better sense of train vs. humans.
We killed time around Shifen Old Street until the first group lantern release in Shifen Square. These releases take place in waves throughout the evening at scheduled times. For example, during this year's festival there were eight groups of lantern releases from around 6 p.m. until 8:30 p.m. for a total of 1200 lanterns. As for one how registers to be in one of these groups, I've read that you need to get to the designated lantern registration site early the morning of the festival and wait in what I'd assume is a long-ass line that you'll never get to the front of. (If you've participated in registering for the group lantern release, I'd be interested in hearing about it!) But there's no need to register if you just want to observe from beyond the sea of people like my friends and I did.
About 15 minutes later it was time for ROUND NUMBER 2.
For a better sense of the lantern release, check out the video above from Kåre.
If you're wondering what ultimately happens to all these lanterns considering there's a little thing called "gravity", this recent article from Taipei Times gives some explanation. According to the article, the lanterns mostly burn up before they reach the ground or decompose if they fall into the hills. As for parts that don't decompose or burn up, the government puts recycling incentives in place to get people to help collect leftover wire frames and lantern paper waste after the festival. Leftover wire frames can be resold or recycled.
After we had taken too many photos of the lantern releases, we headed back to Shifen Old Street so we could release our own lantern.
We turned back to see the next batch of lanterns sparkling through the overcast sky, climbing towards the heavens to alter the destinies of those who released them.
...A sight that was soon followed by a lantern that would never climb higher than the overpass in its way. AND ITS OWNERS WERE THEN CURSED FOREVER.
Just kidding. Lanterns probably have as much ability to take mystical revenge as they do to bring luck. But you never know, which is why you should release your lantern by the train track where it's less likely to get caught under an overpass.
After we bought our lantern, it was time to transform it from "untarnished canvas" to "lantern anointed with the scrawlings of foreign tourists." The vendor set us up in a bare space that had yet to become a real boy. Not that I'm complaining—away from the crowds outside, we had a good amount of space and the privacy to paint whatever we wanted.
And then it was time for the main event: setting stuff on fire and making sky trash that turns into earth trash GIVING OUR HOPES AND DREAMS FLIGHT! The vendor helped us set the lantern's heart of joss paper on fire as we oriented ourselves around the lantern.
After about 20 seconds, the lantern disappeared from our view.
Thankfully the lantern vendors will help you take a video so you can relive the fleeting moment over and over again.
Here are some photos of other people's lanterns:
Food wasn't a major part of our visit to Shifen, but we did eat every now and then because our cells kept crying out for nourishment and we had to silence them before the screams tore our bodies apart. Over the course of the evening we picked up various snacky foods from the many food stalls around Shifen Old Street.
Kåre and I shared a cup of strawberries drizzled in condensed milk-based goo.
Then Kåre and Charlotte ate some lil' buckets of fries.
And after the french fries course came the soft serve dessert course.
After the soft serve course came the Nutritious Sandwich course (營養三明治, yíngyǎng sānmíngzhì), or what I called in my mind, "OMG IT'S THE SANDWICH THAT NICK LOVES." Head to my friend Nick's blog, My Inner Fatty, for his impassioned exhaltation of the Nutritious Sandwich he ate from a stand on Keelung Temple Street. Ever since I read his post in 2010, I had wanted to eat that sandwich. I didn't eat the same exact one, but I liked the version I got. The combination of hard boiled tea egg, sliced ham, tomato wedge, and cucumber slices stuffed into a light, fried bun-thing whose bisected inner breadmeats are coated in some kind of mayonnaise spread is...pretty damn good. If you're into that. Which I now know I am.
At around 9 p.m. we headed back to Taipei on the local train from Shifen. As a continuation of our good transportation luck, the train, though packed, was not a clusterfuck. We were back in Taipei after about one and a half hours.
If you get the chance to visit the festival, you should take it. In addition to getting the opportunity to see swarms of lanterns in the air, you'll also get to set off your own lantern and hop out of the way of an oncoming train, two things that you could probably do elsewhere but shouldn't. And where else can you breathe mountain air not only imbued with the positive energy of thousands of people expressing their hopes and dreams in unison but also haunted by the ghosts of burnt-up lanterns?
[Enthusiastically thrusts out a thumbs-up sign.] PINGXI'S GOT IT!
Check out these websites for info on how to get to Pingxi and Shifen and things to do there:
guidetotaipei.com: Pingxi
guidetotaipei.com: Shifen Old Streets
Here is the official website for the 2017 Pingxi Sky Lantern Festival:
skylantern.ntpc.gov.tw: 2017新北市平溪天燈節
The English section has some information about the festival's location and how to get there. If the website changes in future years and the link doesn't work, try googling "新北市平溪天燈節" to find the festival's latest website.
These blogs also has helpful information in English about attending the festival that may be applicable to future dates:
taiwan-itinerary.blogspot.com: Pingxi Sky Lantern Festival
escape2taiwan.com: Pingxy Sky Lantern Festival 2017 In Taiwan - February 11, 2017
Everything I know about the dangers of bringing foreign produce back into the US I've learned from EVA Air's in-flight landing video from the early '90s. I don't remember much about it because when I was seven years old I didn't have the foresight to take notes about something I might blog about over two decades later. But, hell, who needs "research"? I'll just attempt to piece together my questionably accurate memories for your "benefit."
I'm 100 percent sure the video was animated. I'm less sure about the other parts. At some point in the video, an airplane lands at an airport. (Yeah, Robyn, you got dis.) Then at some point after that, the passengers go through customs and immigration. Then some nefarious but otherwise normal-looking passenger (...it could be you) knowingly sneaks their fruit past customs. Then the video shows what happens if you don't declare your fruits and vegetables and other contraband perishables, which is this: One stowaway insect on that seemingly innocent piece of fruit multiplies into a tsunami of insects whose only purpose in life is to ravage whatever continuous landmass dares to lie in its way, a purpose it fulfills in a matter of seconds thanks to the collective power of a bajillion weaponized appetites. Congratulations, you destroyed America (and probably the rest of North America down through South America). And it only cost you one wax apple.
I was bummed out when I discovered that EVA Air doesn't show this video anymore, nor any other video that traumatizes children through the apocalyptic potential of undeclared produce. But I still think of it in regards to bringing foreign foods back to the US. That's partially why I didn't shove a Taiwanese pineapple (officially considered the best kind of pineapple on Earth, in my biased opinion) into my luggage, as much as I wish I could have. Also, I didn't want to find out what undeclared-produce prison is like.
Instead, I brought home 30 pineapple cakes from my favorite pineapple cake shop, which is sort of like bringing home a pineapple that has been dismembered and cooked into a mash and then inserted into a new skin that's made of butter and flour and then formed into single-serving bricks. So, you know, same thing.
Without any scientific evidence to back me up, I'd say that pineapple cakes, or 鳳梨酥 (fènglí sū), are Taiwan's most famous pastry as well as Taiwan's most popular souvenir, edible or otherwise. These small single-serving "cakes" usually come in the form of square or rectangular bricks whose crumbly shortbread crusts are filled with thick pineapple-flavored paste. (Less common but more whimsical shapes include hearts, the island of Taiwan, and cat heads. Fillings may also be complemented with nuts, dried egg yolks, and dried fruit.)
]]> Pineapple cakes hit all the major points for optimal gift-ability:The main downside is that the freshest brands only have a shelf life of a week or two. Some brands have shelf lives that last for months, but probably at the expense of flavor.
Although only a handful of pineapple cake brands tend to dominate "best-of" lists—namely SunnyHills and Chia Te—you probably have more choices for awesome pineapple cakes now than during any other time in pineapple cake history. WE ARE LIVING IN THE GOLDEN AGE OF PINEAPPLE CAKES! ...Or so I'm guessing. I haven't tried 'em all. Sure, this list of eight famous pineapple cake brands may seem manageable, but the recommendations don't stop there. They also don't stop here. And while I'm not stopping, let's tack on a few years of winners from Taipei's annual Pineapple Cake Festival. The list of worthwhile pineapple cakes goes on. Until it ends. But by the time it ends, the universe will just add more to it. You see the problem here?
Unless it's your life's purposes to find the best pineapple cakes in existence, you may as well stop searching after you find your favorite one. That's why I didn't try that many pineapple cakes when I lived in Taiwan—I found my favorite pineapple cake early on. (If you're wondering, "Robyn, how did you know it was your favorite pineapple cake if you didn't try that many different kinds beforehand?" my answer is, that's a fair question, and I'm just gonna trail off a bit because I don't have a good answer and maybe you'll stop reading if this font is small enough.)
Shou Tian Pin (手天品), home of my favorite pineapple cakes, is easy to miss. There's no English signage, no windows bursting with baked goods, and the decor is pretty bare bones. Almost every time—if not every time—I've been there, my friends and I have been the only customers. Nothing about it yells "I AM A MAGICAL PINEAPPLE CAKE KITCHEN." Which is why I'm writing this post—to virtually yell at you on the shop's behalf. (If you can read Chinese, the name of the shop may seem a bit less humble than the rest of the shop. According to my mom, 手天品 can translate to "handmade excellent stuff" or "heavenly handmade items." ...It's one of those things that sounds better in Chinese.)
Shou Tian Pin make two kinds of pineapple cakes: regular (NT$32) and with chopped walnuts (NT$35). The base filling is made with winter melon, pineapple, maltose, sugar, and butter, and the crust is made of unbleached flour, sugar, antibiotic-free eggs, and European butter. There are no bells or whistles or fancy hats here—each pineapple cake is plainly wrapped in an unlabeled, clear plastic bag. But if you want something a little extra for gifting purposes, Shou Tian Pin also sell sturdy gift boxes designed to hold the pineapple cakes nice 'n snuggly.
You may notice that the first ingredient of the pineapple cake is not pineapple. Subsequently, you may feel compelled to declare with a dramatic thrusting of your index finger in my general direction, "There's an ingredient missing on that list—and that ingredient is named DECEPTION!" This is a reasonable reaction. And there's a reasonable explanation, one that lies behind many things that don't seem to make sense: tradition. Not the tradition of "giving pastries deceitful names" (which is not a tradition), but the tradition of making pineapple cake filling with a mixture of pineapple and winter melon. As the story that I just made up goes, a bunch of years ago someone figured out "Hey, this pineapple mash tastes better if I add winter melon mash." And people have been tweaking the recipe ever since in the search for the perfect flavor.
Or in the search for saving money regardless of the flavor. Adding winter melon to pineapple cakes is regarded by some as a major cost-cutting measure and a potential sign of low quality. Some people might look down on the pineapple-winter melon combo for the latter reason and prefer to eat pineapple cakes made only with pineapple.
If you'd rather buy pineapple cakes made with just pineapple, you're in luck. My impression is that there has never been a better time than now to buy pineapple-only pineapple cakes. According to this article from City543, making pineapple cakes without winter melon has become more popular in recent years in line with the rising popularity of food products with fewer additives and more "natural" ingredients. These kinds of pineapple cakes are usually labeled as 土鳳梨酥 (tǔ fènglí sū) or 純鳳梨酥 (chún fènglí sū). 純鳳梨酥 means "pure/genuine pineapple cake". As for for 土鳳梨酥, my Taiwanese friend Hsupeng explained to me that 土鳳梨 is a specific breed of pineapple whose flavor is more tart than typical pineapples, but that the name 土鳳梨 does not necessarily mean the pineapple cake is only made with that kind pineapple. As the popularity of 純鳳梨酥 has grown, the name has come to refer to any pineapple cake that doesn't use winter melon because the first popular kind of 純鳳梨酥 was made with 土鳳梨. This is one possible explanation, at least. If anyone has a different story behind these names, please let me know.
Having tried some of these pineapple-only pineapple cakes, I've found that I prefer the more traditional winter melon-pineapple combo. Pineapple-only filling tends to be more tart and robustly flavored, as well as more fibrous than their less "pure" brethren. These aren't bad qualities by any means—they just make for a different kind of pineapple cake that you may or may not prefer.
But back to Shou Tian Pin. They hit just the right balance with their filling. Its flavor is mellow and just sweet enough, with a smooth, jammy, texture that isn't too thick. If you're like me, you'll prefer the walnut-enhanced version with its added nuttiness and crunch. The filling is encased in a light, almost meltingly buttery crust that's just as good as the filling, perhaps even better.
One sort of downside to these pineapple cakes is that they have a shelf life of about 10 to 14 days, which isn't the largest window of time for giving out as gifts to people. And two weeks might be pushing it, unless you want to eat a soulless pineapple cake husk. Having eaten a mildly aged Shou Tian Pin pineapple cake that my dad shipped to me from Taiwan, I can attest that time is not their friend. You should eat/distribute these pineapple cakes as soon as you can.
Shou Tian Pin offers more than pineapple cakes. The shop is primarily a bakery that emphasizes its use of minimally-processed, high-quality ingredients—local if possible—in a range of cookies, cakes, and breads. (Besides their pineapple cakes, I'm a fan of their mini chocolate cakes, brownies, and bags of cake scraps. I find something irrationally satisfying about eating cake scraps, as though I personally saved the cake from a dark fate in the bowels of a trash can, like the selfless cake-eating hero I am.) They also sell a small selection of "natural" food products like milk, yogurt, eggs, tomatoes, olive oil, and salt. Their pineapple cakes are particularly popular though, especially with Japanese tourists who want to bring them back home as gifts.
Shou Tian Pin may not make it to the top of pineapple cake "best of" lists, but I can't imagine finding a pineapple cake I like more and want to share with other people. I estimate that I've given away about 50 pineapple cakes to friends and family. I've been on the receiving end as well. The night before my wedding, my friend Charlotte—the friend who introduced me to Shou Tian Pin in the first place—surprised me with a gift box of my favorite pineapple cakes, to which I may have responded something like this:
OH MY GAAAWD AHH AAHAHAHWAAAA I LUV U [weeps]
[turns to Charlotte] OH, HI CHARLOTTE, I LUV U TOO.
If you're thinking, "Hey Robyn, you appear to have an irrationally strong affinity for these pineapple cakes that makes me question whether I can trust your judgement," you're right. I don't even trust my own judgement. Like, sometimes I don't know if I have to pee or not.
Anyway. The way I react to things I really like is comparable to the way this dog reacts to a human-sized version of his favorite toy, except replace the licking and pouncing with shrieking and flailing. I attribute my happy puppy feelings towards these pineapple cakes to my rosy memories of living in Taipei and the neighborhood I lived in. Shou Tian Pin was located just a few blocks from my apartment, and even closer to my school, the Mandarin Training Center at NTNU. Shou Tian Pin was there for my friends and me whenever we wanted to treat ourselves for a job (job = learning Mandarin) well done (well done = we hadn't failed our classes yet). Like the time Charlotte and I stopped by for a pineapple cake treat and roughly 8.6 seconds after we had left the shop, I turned around while we were walking down the street's narrow sidewalk to see that most of Charlotte's pineapple cake had magically disappeared into her face, a face that said, "Oh......hehe......you weren't supposed to see that."
So my love for Shou Tian Pin's pineapple cakes isn't just about the cakes themselves. It's about my friend/hero Charlotte. It's about seeing people's happy faces when I give them pineapple cake gifts. It's about holding each and every empty pineapple cake wrapper open over my open maw and tapping out every last buttery crumb into my mouth where it belongs. It's about the satisfaction of lugging a baby-sized shopping bag of pineapple cakes back to my apartment. It's about good memories in Taipei, memories you may never be able to relate to.
...And the pineapple cakes taste good, probably.
No. 188-1, Chaozhou St, Da'an District, Taipei City, Taiwan 106 (map)
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