That time I lived in Europe

I lived in Europe, for 1 year exactly. I left Columbus, Ohio on August 16 2002 and lived, worked, loved, and got thrown out of a bar for taunting a couple of drunk skinheads in Zilina, Slovakia. I'm rushing ahead, so I'll start at the beginning.

In the Summer of 2002 I was graduating from The Ohio State University. But before graduating, I realized I had no plan after graduation, no job prospects, nothing that stuck out for me career wise. I was basically a ship without a direction. Then one day, I was walking toward class and saw an Ad in the Ohio State newspaper called the Lantern. In the Lantern there was an ad by AIESEC which wanted to send people abroad to study and work. I thought, this would be a great opportunity for me to see the world after I graduate from College.

The country I loved and lived in.

AIESEC found a position for me to teach English in a local private high school in Zilina, Slovakia. It was great, i would work during the week and travel on the weekends. It worked great between me and my roommates. My roommate at the time was from Finland, and his name is Tero Viitala. To this day, i still can't roll my r's. And my other roommate was Ladislav Vargas from Slovakia.  Tero and I would go travelling a lot because even though he is from Europe, he did not travel to many places.  Eventually he would remind me a few times, "Hey Howard, when is your Visa stay end? Let's do a Visa run when we go to Poland, Hungary, or Austria next weekend." There were a few weeks where we're completely exhausted from travelling the previous weekend and we'd look at each other and say "Relaxing Weekend!" It was fun and Tero still is a friend to this day. He's got 3 beautiful daughters and his wife Kata, also an AIESEC'r has a beautiful family in Finland. My other roommate, Ladislav, or Laco as we called him was the guy that got us stuff, movies, movies, and a lot of help communicating things in Slovak was a big help. He now lives in Malaysia and he tried visiting me in Taipei, but the poor guy got lost in the Mountains of Taipei and missed our meeting.  Laco...next time you come to Taipei, bring your phone with you on a hike! Glad you're safe buddy! 

My work was ok, for Slovakia. I'd like to say I enjoyed teaching English, but one of the main reasons I moved to Slovakia was because I wanted to see what it was like living in a different culture, rather than a fusion of Chinese and America culture in America, actually in my little world that was Columbus, Ohio. I wanted to get out of the fish bowl and jump into the ocean so to speak. In my year in Slovakia, I got homesick, quite a few times. But sports like Soccer (Football) and Hockey was what got me through the tough times.

Hockey Got Me through Homesickness.

Hockey got me through a lot of homesickness because this was before Skype and Facebook became big. Myspace was the big man on campus. In any case, hockey was awesome. I knew the rules. Plus before I moved to Slovakia, I was an avid hockey fan. On a side note, when I got to see Bret The Hitman Hart in a wrestling event in Northern Ohio, we chatted about Hockey. How cool was that? Hockey was my mainstay and since the tickets were cheap, I went to regular home games as much as I had time for, which wasn't much.

End of part 1.

Reason why I'm in Taiwan.

The One that I stayed in Taiwan for.

So in one of my other posts in "Making friends in Taiwan", I mentioned that I met my wife through one of the groups mentioned. I actually met her friends at an Oriented event and through a series of fortunate events, the moon and planets aligning and prayer, then I found her. We met at a friends party who was having a house warming party for those of us who played Flag Football. The team got together and the girls I met at the Oriented get together the week before, I called because I really didn't want to hang out with a bunch of dudes for the umpteenth time in a row.

What got me started in finding a girl...it was a team

It wasn't love at first sight. I know people who stare across the room and see that perfect someone and well, that wasn't us. She was sitting beside me and what I noticed most was her black socks. C'mon, there was 10 of us in a room and not enough seats, so some of us had to sit on the floor.  It was a room full of foreigners (White dudes) and me. Also considered a foreigner, but I speak mandarin so they chose me as translator.

The love connection

As the night dragged on, I asked for Gladys' Skype screen name.  I didn't ask for her phone number, because I didn't think I'd end up calling her talking to her.  Little did i know then that it would come back to bite me.

And during the week at work I would Skype with her and chat with her. I got to know more and more about her and that she liked movies and going out. Typical things one would say in a chat. As the week was coming to an end, I asked her out on a date to Warner Village.  Warner Village or now called Vieshow Cinemas was a popular destination for people because there were clubs, restaurants, and a movie cinema nearby. Not to mention shopping until you drop.

Ate too much and couldn't keep eye contact

So the night of the date, My first choice was to go to Chili's. I like their baby back ribs. But the wait time was an hour.  So we walked around for a few mins and came upon Ruby Tuesday.  It says a lot that Ruby Tuesdays was a choice of mine...let alone a second choice. As this date is going along, we're sitting in a high traffic area and lots of people are walking by and I couldn't help but people watch.  Gladys wasn't my main focus, the people walking by were As you can see, the date is starting to get bad.

But wait, this date is far from over, it gets even worse. As we finish the dinner, we decide to go watch a movie. And not just any movie, its the movie that kills young people and uses their essence as Perfume. You guessed it, we watched Perfume a story of a murderer on a first date. It wasn't a bad story, it was a poor peasant kid wanting to perfect his craft and he went about killing innocent women. That was the only fault of the movie and oh yeah this scene got me cringing the most. Only because it was the first date and well, I'll let you see.

 

The scene that could prove worst date ever

When the date was over, it was well past midnight. Usually the MRT (Subway) in Taipei stops service around midnight so we shared a taxi to go home. And folks, this date is going to get worse. The taxi takes us to my apartment first because I lived in Taipei at the time and Gladys lived in Zhonghe.

Suped up Taxi that took me and Gladys home on our first date

The Taxi of course is not any Taxi. Its a Suped up Taxi. I should have known that stepping in a Taxi in front of Neo 19 in the Warner Village area would result in loud music and the driver, driving like a crazy man on the freeway. When we got to my apartment, I looked at Gladys and she looked pretty content with the date, but deep down I knew she was thinking, a few more mins with this guy and he's out. I said bye to Gladys and that I'd call/text her when she got home. 

I wrote down her cell number wrong.

So when I got home, I took a shower and read some emails before going to text Gladys to see if she got home alright from our date. The problem when I went to text her was that I found out that the number wouldn't go through. It would say sending for a while and it would give up. I found out later that I wrote down her number wrong. I was missing one number on her cell phone number. So the whole weekend leading up to Monday, 48+ hours, she thought that I had blown her off. She even told me that what I did was wrong. But there was no way I could have called her because the Skype at my work and my Skype at home were not syncing up at the time. So my savior...Skype. I Skyped her Monday morning and told her that I wrote down her number wrong and that it was all my fault. 

Our second date went much smoother a week later.  That's how our story began. It was rough and sometimes still is rough, but we move on, we communicate and sometimes text each other to say we love each other while we're at work.  Don't worry I have her number right this time.

 All in all, she's the reason I'm here in Taiwan. Plus this kid too.

This kid is why I'm here too!

Making Friends in Taiwan

Making friends in Taiwan. For the first year that I lived in Taiwan, I didn't have friends outside of work. So on the weekends I usually went to then it was Warner Village to hang out and watch movies or go to Ximen to get a massage. The good kind of massage, not the naughty kind.

The life I lived in Banciao in Taiwan was Home, Work, Home and Sleep. I ate in between those times, but it was usually get home at around 8 or 9 and then in bed by 11 or 12. It literally felt like I was living Groundhogs day.  The change came toward the end of my first year in Taiwan where I met a friend and she introduced me to Tina Khoe, the then president of CAPT. Tina and CAPT members saved me from a life of boredom and introduced me into a world of events, friends and connections and eventually meeting my wife.


I actually met my wife's friends through Oriented. Through her friends, my wife and I actually met at a friends house party, but that's a story for another day. Through CAPT and Oriented, i started making connections and making more and more friends.  By the end of my second year in Taiwan, I was on the in crowd of the events circuit in Taipei. I would go to wine tastings and trips to different parts of Taiwan that I wouldn't normally go to. It was pretty fun. There are other groups in the Taipei Organization sphere, but in my mind, CAPT and Oriented are the constants in events per month.

 I believe that CAPT and Oriented has enough of a difference that you could have friends from different groups. Everyone is different, and you'll have to play the organization field to make friends and keep them. Good Luck!

My dog talked

I'm on my way to my current time in Taiwan. I'm just letting you know that I'm not this character that came to Taiwan from Ohio. Actually I'm not even from Ohio, but I'm off subject, so let's go on to my talking dog.

Gizmo was part of the family.

My dog passed away earlier this year in 2011, He was a shih tsu that we adopted in 2001, he enriched our lives and actually made our family more interesting.  He had a special relationship with my mom, my dad was his walker, my sister was his keeper and I was the person that he annoyed.  We adopted him from a pet store in Delaware, Ohio for US$100.  Very cheap for a pure bred Shih Tsu who was 5 years old at the time of adoption. He followed my sister out of the store, and to the car as we took him home. That's how he walked into our lives.

The first week that we had him, he didn't bark, he didn't growl, he didn't make a noise. He was testing us out. But when my friends came over while my family went to Chicago for the weekend, he let loose some barks! A bark that came in bursts of threes. It was always a bark in bursts of three. As we observed over the 10 years that we owned him, he had special ways of doing things and it always had to be the same, sometimes and to this day, we think he had OCD.

Neighbors cat eating Gizmo's Food. Gizmo got no respect
from neighborhood cats. 

He also had a penchant for trying to be friends with cats. We believed that his previous owner had cats and he was friends with his previous owners cat. The problem that arose for him is that the cats in our neighborhood didn't like him. They would hit his head, paw at his head and usually a neighbors cat would follow us home from walks and go into our house. Once again, Gizmo would try to be nice but the cats wanted nothing to do with him.  I'm guessing he just wanted to be friends with them, but not every animal liked him.

When we went on walks, people knew who he was. When i came home from College on the weekends, Gizmo would want us to take him for walks. It came down to me since my family volunteered me to take him for walks. My family would say, "Oh, Gizmo knows where to go for walks, just follow him."  I trusted my family and I let Gizmo take me for a walk. On our way I would pass people who would say, "Hey Gizmo" or "Hello Gizmo!" to which i would ask my dog when they were out of ear shot, "how do they know  you?" He would look back at me and have a kind of smirk on his face and kept walking. My dog was famous! 

Gizmo Leading the way for walks

And finally this is what makes Gizmo unique and the title of this article.  You have probably heard of dogs saying "I love you" and "mamma" and other cute sayings dogs say. Well, my dog learned how to growl my name.  He probably heard my mom and dad call me Howard and learned how to growl my name over time. I would ignore Gizmo when I was playing my PS2 NHL hockey and Madden Football games. It got to the point that he would wait for me to finish the games so we would go to sleep. He'd sit on the couch behind as I was playing my games and he'd growl "HOWAR" until I turned around and looked at him. A few times I would ignore him completely and he'd growl "HOWAR, HOWAR, HOWAR" three times until I acknowledged that he was there. He was definitely a fun dog and though he's gone now, I still have the memory of him calling me "HOWAR, HOWAR, HOWAR." Told you, he had OCD. 

This dog learned to say my name.

knowing my family

Knowing my family on my mom's side is a lesson in Math.  Seven aunts and uncles is a tough thing to memorize when you're a kid. I'm in my 30's now and I'm still reviewing when I have a mini family reunion. Something my parents instilled in me when I was younger.  The thing is, there's so many of them that each aunt or uncle has a number associated with them. Well, the middle few has numbers, the rest are associated with big or small and a few we referred to their English names. To a little kid, remembering names and people was a bit confusing. I'd review their names if you like, but I'm sure you don't want to be confused.

Mini extended family reunion.

I always had problem with remembering my aunts or uncles position in the family.  My parents would be reviewing in the car with me on who would be at the family get together and to call their names when I saw them. It was a big deal because we saw them at least once or twice a year. The problem was that when I got out of the car, I quickly forgot each aunt and uncles names.  As soon as we entered the door of their houses, I went and did a quick mumble of some rather suspicious name calling and went off to play with the other kids. As I got older, I succeeded in calling my aunts and uncles by their correct names, but I still had to think about it.

Then there are my cousins. They are probably the easiest names to remember. As we got older, we haven't stayed as close as we were when we were younger. Most of us are now married or live in different parts of the US or like me living in Taiwan. We still keep up with the occasional family birthday email each month or sometimes chat on Facebook. But I definitely would like to catch up with each cousin as they had a part in shaping my childhood.

The Kids

Best Summer Ever???

We all went to high school together and graduated the same year.  Sean was a year younger than us. We all wanted to get out of Ohio, and just to just relax before we started school.  It was the summer of 2000. My friends were on our way to Florida for the last summer Hurrah. It was me, Nic Stojak, Jason Heyder, Joe Bauer, Jim Price, Steve Jankowski, Sean Clifford. For some of us, that summer was the last time we all had time to hang out as a group. That was the summer, that we were either at Ohio State or at Columbus State. We all started school in September and it was around August that we went for a vacation.

We drove from Hilliard, Ohio in the evening time to go to St. Petersburg Florida in the morning. We rented a suite in St. Petes, for the 7 of us. We had a suite on the 4th floor overlooking the Gulf of Mexico. We all had fun, reminiscing about our past, talking about our present and talking about our future. None of us knowing what the future held for each of us. Heck, I didn't think I'd live in Taiwan...and that was a very last thing on my mind.


 
During that week, I learned new things about my friends.  I learned that Jim snores, which can be heard thru a closed door. Jason and Steve were snorers, they shared a room. Their snores could be heard from 2 closed doors. I learned that Jason and Steve, although good friends love to argue the heck out of each other. Jim, the peacemaker was always trying to calm Jason and Steve down. Nic...he's just a dedicated fun-aholic.  To this day, he still is the fun-aholic. Joe...although we didn't know back then, already had inklings of the chef that he's going to be.

Its 11 years later and though we're not so close as we were back in 2000, we still keep in touch thru Facebook, the occasional marriage and thru MSN. These are my friends. They came to my wedding instead of being at the start of the Ohio State vs Michigan game in 2008. Thanks guys!!!


Now, I am married with a naughty kid. Jason is married. Jim is also married. Joe is currently dating a very beautiful girl from pictures I saw on Facebook. Steve is all tatted up and doing his own thing. Nic, he's the one that hasn't grown up, but for all intents and purposes, he's doing something that he loves, playing sports and enjoying it.


Was it the best summer EVER? Probably, but it was one of the last times we all hung out as a group.

kiss bye and I did it again.

My son has learned to say Bye. But the funny part of him saying kiss bye is that, we'll, he only says the BYE part. He doesn't know how to say Kiss yet. He opens his palm to his mouth and moves his hand away from his mouth and says "Bye."

In any case, he can say Bye and something which sounds really similar to "I did it again." I taught him to say "I did it again" when he was about 8 or 9 months old. He's now 1 yr 3 months old and he mumbles nonsense and I of course say, "Really?" "How did that happen?"  Gladys plays along and its fun to see them interacting.  

They say this is the fun time of our kid's growth because he now interacts with us more and more.  Gaining more and more independence and his own opinions  That story, will be for another day. I'm going to do what my son does and say I did it again, Kiss Bye! :-) 

The Kid

Here's something old I wrote back in March 2010 on Facebook.

Back in January of 2010, it was probably the most scary time of my life and also the most happy. The night before Gladys told me that she was going to the doctors for a check up. She had an idea that her body was changing. For me, I thought she was having the flu. So it was no big deal, go to the doctor, get a check up, take some meds and get better. I didn't know what was coming would change our lives FOREVER.

The next day while I was at work, minding my own business, my wife Gladys calls me on my cell phone. I pick up and say "Hello?" She says, "I'M PREGNANT!!!" I was stunned silent. It was one of those moments where I should have said something. I should have said "Atta Boy Howie" but silence, absolute silence for about 10 seconds on the phone. I finally muttered something, and still I don't remember what I said. Since the news of the pregnancy wasn't a full 3 months yet, I couldn't tell anyone at work. My parents were asleep due to the time difference, between Taiwan and the US. I just sat in silence at work doing what I had done before, but I was more distracted than anything else. Chinese customs said that its bad luck to announce a pregnancy before 3 months.

That night, I told my parents about the good news and what was most surprising was that my sister Jennfier was more excited than my parents. Thats what you get for having Asian parents. In the end, when I met Gladys that evening, I finally had to smile and what she said earlier finally sunk in. I'm going to be a Dad, we're going to be parents.

So the Kid, a son by the way, will be due in July. More responsibilities, more joy, more laughs. To the next stage in life, more growing up.

Getting to know me

Getting to know me is like opening a book to this book that's been on this shelf for years. You know its there, and you have a desire to read it, but don't have the time.

But when you go pick up the book and realize why did I leave this book here? You open up the book and realize its not a boring book, but full of stories and each time you read it, you get something different out of it.

Well that book is me. I've got stories to tell, most of the stories I tell are in Taiwan, but a majority of it is outside Taiwan.  As you get to know me, you'll know why I "dance" the way that I do.