Monday, April 03, 2006

Day 3 - Orientation

Today’s Programme
MorningIntroduction of OCAC
Afternoon Speech/ Opening Ceremony
Evening Competition
HotelTaoyuan Training Center, TaoYuan

This morning we had to attend the presentation of Taoyuan Center. Of course, I didn’t understand what they said as my Mandarin is so poor. A group mate who is very good at Mandarin translated what they have presented to us. She said the speaker kept saying that there are lots of Thai workers in Taiwan. The workers who built the center were Thai too.

In the afternoon, we had to change our dress to be formal suit to attend another presentation about OCAC (Overseas Chinese Affairs Commission). It has been terrible. It has been one of the OCAC committee. He spent 1 hour 15 minutes only talking. We were all bored.

After 1hr15m of being in hell, we were allowed to have a break before having the formal orientation (Opening Ceremony). I was scared of being bored, but it wasn’t that bad. The speakers only spent a couple of minutes each. There was an old man who is very funny. He spoke with exiting tones. He often asked “Dui Bu Dui?” (= “Is that right?”) or “Hao Bu Hao?” (=”is that good?”). We also gave him instant feedback loudly. (We were trained by XuanXuan to reponse this kind of questions. When we are asked “Dui Bu Dui?”, we have to say “Dui!”. When we are asked “Hao Bu Hao?”, we have to say “Hao!”)

After the speakers were done, we had two shows from Dui (=group) 1 and 4. I had seen the shows before we went there already. The third show was “Peng You” (=friends) which the performers just learnt how to dance after lunch. Some guys danced very well, but some didn’t remember the actions. They were taking a peek at others all the time. It was very funny because Dui Zhang (=group leaders) were also showing them how to dance behind the audiences.

That night we had plan to have Mama party (Mama is a famous instant noodles brand in Thailand). P’Arm, my Dui Zhang, stole tons of fried chicken and Guava that were left from our dinner from cafeteria. Not only that, he also collected paper-dishes, paper-bowls, and chopsticks.


During the night, we had sport game. There were the male basketball competition and UFO game. I was curious to know what UFO game means. I thought it’s hard to play but it was just sending a plastic dish from head to rear. My group got the last place :(

After playing the UFO game, we got to our place and cheered the basketball players. It was damn fun cheering by singing and dancing.

We really wanted to win because the winners will get 5 packs of instant noodles from each of the rest three groups. (it’s just the gamble game among DuiZhangs) Who’s the winner? Of course, it was us! Unfortunately we lost half of instant noodles because P’Arm asked Louis, Dui3’s leader, to share the noodles before the final game began because he was afraid that we would lose.

After the game, we invited all Fu Dao Yuans to our room to have instant noodles. We were very shy because we stole the food from cafeteria. They were shy to get in too. They didn’t spend long time with us because they had meeting but they did try Thai-style noodles that we offered even if it’s very hot.

I've heard that we stole too much chicken. The boys had to feed chicken to the dogs in the next morning.