Taichung Homesick Blues

I'll be travelling home for my summer vacation tomorrow and will leave you with these notes until I get settled back in the Hub City.

• Thursday night, my wife and I attended an advance screening of the new Fantastic 4 movie. We received free tickets from the mother of a Nigerian-Taiwanese boy named Bobo. The theater was crammed with kids - still don't know who was eligible for the screening - and their parents. A theater employee warmed up the crowd by giving away gifts asking questions like "What movie premieres on July ?th" (Harry Potter), " What movie do you really want to see?" (Harry Potter) and "What movie are you going to tell mom and dad to take you to see?" (Harry Potter). Poor Bobo knew the answer before any others and shouted it loud enough for Dad back in Nigeria to hear. However, the employee wasn't able to figure out that the people occupying seats past the first 5 rows were children and not a midget jamboree. Bobo got nothing and started to cry. I stood up and pointed at Bobo and yelled for the employee to call on him. He didn't I and I called him an incredible nincompoop in a tone loud enough that Bobo would approve of. My wife called me something less polite and made me sit down.
• In a great display of prescience, Ni Howdy dispatched one of our contributors to Costa Rica in advance of the severing of diplomatic ties by Costa Rica. Here are two excerpts from Presidents Oscar Arias' 1987 Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech:

"A nation which mistreats its own citizens is more likely to mistreat its neighbors." - Go China!

"I said then, and I repeat today, that we cannot ally ourselves either politically or economically with governments which oppress their peoples." - Uh...Go People's Republic of China!

Now, his rationale for abandoning Taiwan: He criticized Taiwan for giving “insufficient” aid to its allies.

“I was always critical of the Taiwanese, and I can say now that I always told them . . . if you want to have friends in the world, you should be more generous,” he said.

We hope that Bread will tear himself away from his "studies" to give us an on-the-scene-account.

• Did anybody else notice the final minute of Game 2 between the Spurs and Cavaliers? I know the Sports Guy has been relentlessly criticizing Cavs head coach Mike Brown, but saw nothing in his columns or blog about his final minute decision. Down 11, the Cavs received the ball after a loose-ball foul. He pulls LeBron James with 54 seconds on the clock. The Cavs walk the ball down the court and waste almost 20 seconds ( I'm relying on my memory, here) and throw up a clanker that San Antonio rebounds. Now it's San Antonio's turn to walk the ball down, burn the clock - no fouling occurring - and miss a shot. The Cavs rebound and are left with around 10 seconds left to seal their defeat. The buzzer sounds with James still in front of the scorer's table waiting to come in. I would love to hear someone's explanation of this move. Again, I'm relying totally on my sometimes faulty memory and if it didn't happen that way I would also like to hear.
• Finally, a tech question. Do computers have regional restrictions for playing DVDs like DVD players do? I am going to get a few when I'm back in Texas and want to know if they will play on my Taiwan-bought Acer laptop.

Have a good summer. I'll report from the Hub City soon.