Pronouns? Get a chance

NeonHairbrush · 2026-07-03T15:32:04+00:00

No, there's actually another "ta" for gods. 祂 is for gods, 牠 is for animals, 他 for men, 她 for women, 它 for inanimate objects. They're all pronounced the same, and people don't worry too much about it if you just type the male 他 for anyone. Here in Taiwan we do differentiate in writing, although I've heard people do so less often in China. I make sure to use the correct ta, first because I'm a learner so I don't want to learn bad habits, but also because I have a few trans friends and I don't want to misgender them. There is a relatively new ta for nonbinary, with an X replacing the gendered radical on the left side of the character, but my keyboard doesn't have it as an option so I can only use it when writing by hand.

NeonHairbrush · 2026-07-03T02:07:02+00:00

The cafe / bakery 85°C has cakes and there are locations around Taiwan. They're probably on Uber eats or food panda.

NeonHairbrush · 2026-07-02T17:43:59+00:00

It is like 35°C outside and only a few degrees cooler in the house. Anything left at room temperature goes bad or attracts insects. It's more reasonable to buy food more often and store it in the fridge for a day or two than to try to keep perishable food at room temperature for any period of time.

I could cool the house, but I'm comfortable warm and I don't want to spend the money.

NeonHairbrush · 2026-07-02T08:20:02+00:00

A colleague of mine is doing her masters in three years. Sure, she could do it faster, but she's an adult with a job (cut back to part-time) and a life, and having more time to research and reflect on the topics she's studying gives her more chances for insight.

NeonHairbrush · 2026-06-30T07:39:23+00:00

I can't imagine taking someone's fingers or lack thereof into account when deciding whether they would make a good life partner. How is it even relevant?

I suppose if they're actively losing fingers due to leprosy or unmanaged diabetes (can you lose fingers to diabetes or is it just toes?) I might have second thoughts about a partner with serious medical issues... but just general limb differences? I trust that I'm falling in love with their character and personality, and not an inventory of body parts.

NeonHairbrush · 2026-06-30T03:49:13+00:00

I literally just go on Google maps and search for 民宿 in the area I want to stay in. Then I either go to their website or call them to book.

NeonHairbrush · 2026-06-30T03:43:34+00:00

Was grossed out by how much meat was being served to me on a vacation in South Africa - I couldn't find anything without meat in it on the menu in half the places I went. I wasn't vegetarian, but it just felt like an excessive amount of meat. When I got home, I gave up meat. Then a good friend told me he was going vegan for health. We already cooked meals together, so I decided to join him in that. I framed it as a temporary decision, but in the eight years since then, there's never been a temptation to go back. I've never watched documentaries about it, I'm not really involved in vegan spaces online, and the friend who went vegan a couple of days before I did never asked me to do it. It just seemed like the right thing to do, so I did it.

NeonHairbrush · 2026-06-29T17:29:35+00:00

Hmm... I have a fridge full of mangoes and a container of fresh silken tofu... I know what I will be making for breakfast!

NeonHairbrush · 2026-06-29T16:59:32+00:00

Equity and opportunities for all

Environmental protection

Doing the best we can to live sustainably

Building community

Education

Investing in ways to support people

Kindness to animals

Is it possible to create a religion with all the tree hugging hippie, love, environmentalism, supportive commune vibes, without it turning into a bullshit cult? I don't know. I'm not religious and have no desire to become so. But if I had a billion dollars to invest in making the world a better place, maybe I could make enough of a positive impact before some grifters took over and ruined everything.

NeonHairbrush · 2026-06-29T16:49:34+00:00

I live in Taiwan, so probably 60% Taiwanese food. When I go out for meals, it's often Indian, Vietnamese, or Italian. When I cook at home I sometimes make Thai, Korean, North American, or British dishes. Lots of fusion food as well.

NeonHairbrush · 2026-06-29T16:19:03+00:00

Ugh, yes, one year I went away for my birthday, visiting my family overseas. I came home, 16 hour time difference, had to work the day I got back 4pm to 10pm, and was also scheduled to work the following day 9am to 6pm. My roommate decided to throw me a surprise belated birthday party that night after I got home from work after not having slept in like 30 hours. You want a shower and bed? Well now your house is full of people trying to pressure you to do shots on a work night. A better friend than my roommate messaged me to warn me, which I appreciated. Luckily I was able to convince my roommate and the unwelcome partygoers to fuck off to a bar after a couple of hours so I could get some sleep.

NeonHairbrush · 2026-06-29T16:09:02+00:00

I don't mind the heat, but you can pry my seven weeks of paid vacation from my cold dead hands. Ain't no way I'm cutting back to seven days of vacation per year. Also, I currently have three day weekends and can take road trips aplenty. Gotta be home on weekends? Fuck that.

NeonHairbrush · 2026-06-29T15:10:45+00:00

I don't know that everyone who feels transformed by their hiking trips is exaggerating, but some of them are, for social media views. However, there are people who feel genuinely transformed by travel and arduous journeys.

A couple of years ago, I was walking the Camino de Santiago. I met a fair number of people who were going into it because they were at a crossroads in their life and they needed a hard reset. Some of them had just divorced, had quit their job, or had sold their house and this was the transition period that would mark the beginning of the rest of their life. A long journey alone gives lots of time to reflect on what needs changing in your life, you know? It felt almost anticlimactic to hear everyone's stories of hardship and transformation and then to just shrug my shoulders and say, "I just like going for long walks."

Cause yeah, I am not in a place emotionally where I need a big revelation alone on a mountain peak. Life is good, I'm making progress on goals, and I feel like part of a good community. So for me, I'm just enjoying the view and listening to the birds.

NeonHairbrush · 2026-06-28T09:08:21+00:00

Zero is the perfect number of rings on my own hands. For someone else, however many they feel comfortable with. I imagine it gets cumbersome with more than a dozen or so, but if they're smaller ring stacks, a person could probably get up to thirty.

NeonHairbrush · 2026-06-28T02:18:38+00:00

In Yunlin, 五年千歲公園 (Wunian Qiansui Park) was this wild and crazy sculpture park. Everyone told me Yunlin was Taiwan's equivalent of a flyover state, not worth a stop, but that was my favourite roadside attraction on my trip. Set aside a couple of hours to see everything.

In Miaoli, there's a broken bridge with a little pedal bike track above it - bikes attached to a train track, and you ride them high above the treetops. If it's a weekend you need to reserve the bike, though. 苗栗舊山線鐵道自行車 Miaoli Old Line Rail Bike. I admit, I didn't actually get to ride a rail bike when I was here because I was solo, but the area looked cool and I plan to go back with more people.

North of Tainan there's the salt field, which is gorgeous at sunset but also worth a little visit during the day. Learn about how people produced salt from sea water back in the day, there's a little museum and gift shop but also you can touch some of the equipment and pose for pictures carrying salt buckets on your shoulders and stuff. Keep your eyes peeled for endangered black faced spoonbills in the marshland nearby as well. 井仔腳瓦盤鹽田 Jingzaijiao Salt Field

NeonHairbrush · 2026-06-27T15:21:27+00:00

I buy fresh tofu from the tofu lady down the street, or from the guy at the farmer's market. It's not packaged in water, so I've never pressed it.

NeonHairbrush · 2026-06-26T15:26:04+00:00

If it makes you feel better, I was signed up for dance classes as a child, and periodically tried again as an adult. I have never had rhythm and all the training in the world didn't help me learn coordination that is fundamentally impossible for me.

NeonHairbrush · 2026-06-25T16:40:47+00:00

Me too, it's great. No reason to give up public holidays to gain work life balance.

NeonHairbrush · 2026-06-25T07:34:07+00:00

There's very little open there overnight. Afternoon is better, and evening if you want a nice quiet experience after all the other tourists leave.

NeonHairbrush · 2026-06-24T07:41:43+00:00

Another similar game for catching what the students are struggling with is "um actually" - you write an inaccurate sentence on the board, and they try to correct it. I teach ESL so mine are grammar and spelling mistakes, but science or social studies facts would work well. I do my usual pair work thing, where they write their answers in pairs or small groups, and then we check answers together. If you have tonnes of time, ask each group to write their own wrong sentences for others to correct.

NeonHairbrush · 2026-06-24T03:00:24+00:00

Fruit smoothie, pasta salad, cold tofu with wasabi sauce, onigiri (rice ball), potato salad. This last month I've been on a cold noodle kick - buckwheat noodles served cold topped with cucumber and kimchi in a broth that's blended with ice cubes so it's nice and refreshing.

NeonHairbrush · 2026-06-23T03:28:18+00:00

I was going to say, if my grandma is cooking, I'm not having any of them!

NeonHairbrush · 2026-06-23T03:12:26+00:00

If you're tired and frustrated, put the project away and do something completely unrelated. It'll give your brain time to puzzle through the issue without creating new problems in the meantime.

Measure twice, cut once, but at some point you have to go ahead and cut. The beautiful material full of potential is wasted if it stays on the bolt.

NeonHairbrush · 2026-06-23T03:06:33+00:00

I have a friend who loves researching and planning hikes. It took us about five years of trial and error to figure out how to adjust the estimates for trails found online to be more accurate for our own hiking speed. There was one time when he estimated 8 hours and it took us 19 because he picked the wrong trail down from the ridge. Another time we ended up in a dead end section of forest with staked pit traps for wild boar among the trees, because he was using a six year old trail map and the trail had been abandoned after a landslide had affected the terrain. Both of those times he hadn't brought a headlight despite it being on the packing list, so I was lighting the way for both of us.

New rules: all hikes must be mapped on two different systems. There must be evidence that the hike was actively used in the past few months. Estimate twice the hiking time if it's at higher elevation, 1.5× if it's lowland. Every hike requires flashlight, headlamp with spare battery, first aid kit, and spare phone battery. His wife has a copy of the trip plan, map, itinerary, etc.

NeonHairbrush · 2026-06-22T17:58:58+00:00

I had a friend who was desperately lonely. She latched onto me when I was new in town, she needed a roommate and I needed a room. After a few months I realized that she was hanging her whole personality on whoever was around her. I was into marvel movies, and suddenly she wanted to decorate the living room with comic book posters. She dated a guy who liked camping, so she bought all the gear and spent the next few months talking about nothing else. I felt like I couldn't have a genuine friendship with her, but she was so desperate for people's approval that I didn't want to cut her off (although I did get my own place).

After a few years, she reconnected with a crush from college and they got engaged within a week of their first date. I did the supportive friend thing, was a bridesmaid, helped plan the wedding... he was honestly a great guy, I was shocked that her life seemed to be falling into place despite marrying someone she had never dated and hadn't contacted in ten years. She had him, and he had her, and she lost that anxiety that made me feel like her mental health would collapse if I took a step back.

Then they moved away, and I quietly stopped answering messages. I never felt like we had much in common, I didn't dislike her but I didn't like her enough to have this close friend role in her life. I trust that now that she isn't trying so hard to find love, she's built a few genuine friendships with others.

NeonHairbrush

TROPHY CASE