The only rule I live my life by is the golden one, "treat others the way you would want them to treat you." but I've also succumbed to the fact that, "no good deed goes unpunished." so while yes i work hard to help my friends and i fight very hard to improve Taiwan in any small way that I can, those things usually result in a lot of stress and troubles. But to use another slogan, "nothing worth doing is easy."
Anyway I think as humans it's very easy to just focus on all our troubles and not see our successes. With my birthday coming up, I was telling a friend about how on my first birthday in Taiwan, I lost my ipod in a taxi. Taking a step back, it's ridiculous how this is still the thing I most remember from all my birthdays in Taiwan. Not only have I had some great birthdays since then, but as you can see, I'm doing pretty well when it comes to ipods.
The other day I was frustrated with something I was helping a friend with that wasn't going the way we intended, and while wallowing I realized that I have 3 iphones and one ipad, somebody who is that fortunate, shouldn't be down about anything. Are you ready for the part that really makes me seem like a spoiled brat? I didn't pay for any of these, all of the things in this picture were given to me by friends as a thank you for helping them out in some way.
I'm not saying that I believe in karma, but just from the looks of it, helping out people doesn't always seem to result in trouble. Perhaps, this is how I could motivate more people in Taiwan to care, by saying "the universe will pay you back with iphones." It's worth a shot.
Anyway thanks to all my friends who made the above photo happen. This is actually not all the ipods that I have received, I've definitely paid it forward by giving other ipods away. I would also like to give the two iphone 3s I have to some of my friends who still haven't realized that it's the 21st century. However at the moment I use all of the things in this picture, well except for the first ipod which has been retired.
Yes you heard me right, I use all of them. Because of their different ages, capacities, and firmwares, they each have different uses which unfortunately can't all be done by one thing. It's a pretty complicated set up but eventually I'll be able to move everything over to the iphone 4 and be golden.
But the true star is Suzy, the ipad. She is all things in one, personal assistant, entertainment center, and most importantly...tutor. Yep 90% of her usage is as Chinese dictionary. Whenever I see a word I don't know, I have to draw it with my finger, and Suzy will tell me what it means. This obviously can't be done on a computer, and the iphone screens are just too small for this. So without Suzy I truly wouldn't be able to study Chinese. She is a savior.
