I am now an English teacher.

I never figured I would be teaching an English class. I never figured I would be teaching any kind of class. That would require getting in front of a class several times a week and speaking semi-extemporaneously for an hour at a time. Terrifying!

Well, I've been doing it for two weeks now. And I think I'm actually getting used to it.


My job is to stand in front of a class of about seven students and talk with them, and try to get them to talk. In English. The actual class size varies dramatically. I've had as many as 13 students, and as few as two. And it's hard to get them to talk! Most of the time it's like talking to a bunch of brick walls. I can ask a simple yes or no question, and get complete silence.

I'm trying to figure out how to deal with this. I figure one way is to point to people who haven't talked in a while and direct questions to them in particular. This tends to lead to long, uncomfortable silences -- but at least this way someone else is motivated to say something.


Above all, I've discovered that stage fright wears off remarkably fast. Who would have guessed?

Attention, Taiwan: the cold is a viral disease

I keep hearing people saying that if you get a cold you should go see a doctor. I may have a skewed impression from my small sample size, but it's still weird. So everybody, listen up: the cold is a virus, not a bacterium. The doctor can't give you magic get-better drugs for the cold yet.

I'm sure everybody's heard of the wonders of antibiotics. But antibiotics attack bacteria. Viruses are different, and are not affected by antibiotics. There are at least two companies working on antiviral drugs that target the most common kind of cold virus, but that's part of The Future. At the moment, all a doctor can do is listen to you list off symptoms, tell you that you have a cold, and tell you to drink lots of liquids and get plenty of sleep and maybe buy some Benadryl if the symptoms are really getting you down. And wash your hands so you don't give other people the disease.

That's it. Just the same things your mother told you when you were little. That one paragraph is all you really need to know about dealing with the cold. Just remember the symptoms and remember some simple instructions, and you can avoid unnecessary doctor visits. This is easy, Taiwan.