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| "Welcome to sports injuries and sports massage diploma" |
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| Group Photo |
How do you explain to someone that you don't eat anything with tentacles before 8pm at night? Sitting at lunch downstairs in the dinning hall of the Mo Mo's department store the students were eager to join me for lunch on the first day of their course, and like a posse surrounding their fugitive, they appeared from all sides carrying bowls of various sizes, including a tray on which was a huge squid, its legs splayed out towards me like it had deliberately regurgitated itself in defiance of being cooked.
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| Squid Lunch |
"You must try pearl tea. It is famous in Taiwan. Very expensive in America. Four dollars one cup," said Victoria.
"Ok" I said, I'd try it. "What's the pearl made of?"
"Its black," she said, making a pincer movement with her fingers, "like a pearl. You must suck it up." This was getting more dangerous by the minute but there was no way out as my host had already motioned to Kelly to get me the drink. "You want a warm one or a hot one?" Here they have three options for beverages: hot, cold and warm. I ordered hot with the intention of stalling the act of ingestion. The class were intrigued to see how I was going to suck up black pearls from hot tea. "Maybe I'll let it cool down and have it later?" I suggested when a large paper cup was placed in front of me containing a straw with a 1cm diameter. "Why's the straw so big?" I asked.
"For the pearls!" said Victoria, and everyone smiled. So with my host, her assistant and half the class watching I put my mouth to the straw and tentatively sucked. It was tolerable. The pearls are the size of small marbles with the consistency of very soft, warm jelly and ever so, ever so slightly aniseed. They stuck to my molars as I chewed them and Victoria watched intently. "Its nice yes?" she said with wide eyes. "Mmm" I replied, smiling and chewing and raising my eyebrows in a manner suggestive that I was enjoying it whilst not actually committing a reply to words. Three students approached and bowed and nervously slipped a small tub of what looked like white glue onto my table. "Special pudding!" said Victoria, "Coconut milk!"
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| Pearl Tea |
After lunch I had to negotiate my way back to the 11th floor through a store of women intent on changing my appearance through the application of expensive creams colours. This required stealth and cunning the like of which Daniel Craig would envy. With my carefully practiced just-woken-up-no-make-up-since-the-80s look, I'm an obvious candidate for a complete makeover and sales assistants, highly skilled in customer combat, hone in on my presence from all corners of the store. Once trapped you get asked about your beauty routine but 'routine' implies you do more than one thing whereas I get up and get washed. What's there to 'routine' about it? The advantage of being in a British department store used to be that I could pretend to be foreign and thus partially extract myself from roving Revlon assistants, intent on pinning me down and smearing my lips bright red. "There, take that you unlipsticked creature. Pah!" (if you get caught the trick is not to struggle or it makes the experience worse). I could fairly easily dodge the infantry of saleswomen who, like police armed with poison gas, loitered with their perfume spritzers ready to take down passers by. An inability to speak English is no longer a safety guard now that assistants in department stores in London are likely to have a Polish mother, German father and having been schooled for 7 years in the Ukraine and with a degree in business studies from Birmingham, can probably find a language to suit you. Here in Taiwan its pretty obvious I'm not from these parts, and being a good foot and a half taller than anyone else, my powers of evasion are tested to the limit. (Their clothes rails are all really low and there are glass mirrors everywhere so potential customers have no place to hide). With the restaurant in the basement and the teaching room on the 11th floor, I have a whole 11 floors to negotiate. Its a battle of wills. Its too early for any assistants to have sussed out my route so for now I'm fairly safe and can get to the lifts unharmed. (And to stay unharmed you have to observe the elevator safety signs, presumably designed for women who have just been lipsticked and are shaken and disorientated).
Back in the teaching room after lunch the students were playing with the teaching toys and seemed to have enjoyed the first morning of their course which was spent assessing the shoulder joint. With the help of Victoria we made flip charts in Chinese and students were allowed to film everything and take photos, something they really enjoyed and did speedily and unobtrusively. Each session took longer to deliver, as Victoria had to translate not only my simple instructions but also any questions and my replies. Note taking took a whole lot longer because their symbols took so long to construct, one of the reasons I had encouraged Victoria to allow them to take pictures as well. Together, myself and Kelly are taking our own photos and making a 'collage' of the entire course to be given to the students. Each night when I get back to my room I download the 50 or so photos I have taken during the day and annotate them. My notes will then be translated into Chinese and the picture with their accompanying notes given to the students on a CD. The students all wanted me to visit one of many night markets with them but I am resisting because after a 10 hour day I need to rest and Victoria will loose her voice if she doesn't rest also. I pacified everyone by having a group photo taken. The students had survived their first day of sports injuries and I had survived the black pearl initiation. It was a promising start.
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| Shoulder Assessments |
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| Springing the AC Joint |
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