There are several languages spoken in Taiwan, due to various historical occupations as well as indigenous languages that have somehow survived. The official language of Taiwan, however, is Mandarin Chinese.

Mandarin Chinese is a tonal language. A few weeks ago I didn’t really have a firm grasp on what that meant, exactly, but alas, the Lonely Planet guide to Taiwan has come to build my understanding. From the guidebook:

by altering the voice’s pitch within a syllable, the meaning of a word is completely changed. Getting your tones wrong can have embarrassing consequences – wǒ gǎnmào, for example, means ‘I’ve caught a cold’, while wǒ gàn māo means ‘I copulate with cats’!

Here kitty kitty

I’ve managed to actually figure out what each of the different types of accent marks indicate as far as intonation are concerned. Baby steps.

As I was trying to get more in touch with why I feel this way, I was reminded of the story of the Red Box. If you’re in the U.S. you’ve likely seen, or even used one of these at the supermarket or fast food establishment. It’s called “Red Box” and it’s a little automated video rental kiosk. The concept is really pretty neat – you swipe a credit card, rent a new release movie for…I dunno, I think $1/day. You can return the DVD to any Red Box anywhere! Yep, seems pretty neat. And cheap! So, the last time I was back in the U.S. I rented a movie from one of these things. All went well with the rental but when I tried to return it, the machine was on the fritz….stuck in some sort of infinite computer loop or something. I was actually standing in line behind another person for quite some time. I just figured the guy was a luddite and couldn’t figure out the overly complex task of inserting an object in a slot, but alas, it wasn’t him, it was the stupid machine – just sitting there, not doing anything. He finally gave up and when I stepped up to the machine it was displaying some sort of error message. I found the manager of the fast food establishment and asked for help. My rudimentary Espanol skills tell me that he was trying to inform me that it wasn’t his problem – the machine didn’t belong to the restaurant and that in order for my problem to be resolved I would be required to speak to some cretin in Bangladesh or Tallahassee. I called, I was put through a series of voice prompts that resulted in yet another infinite loop. No matter what I said I was always met with a response of “oh, so you’d like to become a member” or “did you say you’d like to make a payment?”. Yes, seriously. This went on for what seemed like forever. Finally, through some sort of incomprehensible electronic sorcery, my call was routed to a never-ending queue to speak with a real live human being. The music that was looped in between assurances that my call “is very important” caused my ears such pain that I prayed that Lawrence Welk’s orchestra would appear and those goofy tap dancers from his show would ram the heels of their stupid little tap shoes so deep into my ears that I would be relieved of hearing such atrocities for eternity. No such luck, only more nerve-racking music that Satan himself must have orchestrated in a bid to drive normal people into homicidal rages.

After being on hold for something like 6,546 days, I was finally connected to a real human who, surprisingly, happened to be extraordinarily congenial and was able to tell me that their systems had crashed or something and that I would have to wait to return my DVD and that the system would automagically know that I wasn’t able to return it on time and, furthermore, I wouldn’t be charged for the “extra” day. I was quite relieved by this news but at the same time my level of annoyance had gotten really out of hand. Even if I figured that my time was worth minimum wage, I could have just purchased the DVD and been better off economically than to have spent the time I spent trying to turn the stupid thing back in…and that’s only counting the time at the kiosk and on the phone and no time driving back and forth from the stupid thing.

Now, to most people dealing with this type of thing on a daily basis an experience like this surely seems quotidian but to me who has become accustomed to problem resolution being done in a very personal manner and quite timely…well, this experience became another huge frustration and an unbearable vexation and representative of everything I seem to come to Antarctica to avoid. Seriously, my biggest frustration here is when the coffee runs out and as amped up as I get about things like that, the resolution is so completely simple and easily managed that I feel fortunate to not have to deal with impersonal solutions to problems.

Enjoy your Red Box DVD kiosk, your ATMs, your self-checkout, drive-through banking and dining where something ALWAYS goes amiss. Bask in the glory of 64 channels of shit – several of which seem to have some screaming jack ass purporting to be reporting the news. Enjoy all of those modern “conveniences”. I think I’m going to go to some unknown beach that barely has electricity and where “agua caliente” as an amenity isn’t something you can take for granted and is a selling point at some (but not all) lodging. I’m going to the beach to live the “sandal life”.