The World Games are not my Games

Have I been away? From this place yes, but I've been hard at work updating my information about Taiwan.

They changed the name of the Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall back again. His statue was still in there all the time, and anyway, Democracy Memorial Hall was such a weird name. A memorial is for somebody or something that's dead, so was democracy dead? Silly name gone, old dictator's name back. So what.

I also followed a little bit of the World Games in Kaohsiung, on Taiwanese web sites, because that's actually the only place you could find out anything about the event. I only learned a week before the opening that the previous games were held in Duisburg, Germany. Never heard of them before, the Games that is, not Duisburg. The sports are too exotic, the participants too completely unknown. As to sports, I like my events focused on one type, like Wimbledon with all tennis, or next year's World Cup, all football, or soccer as I used to call it before I lived in Europe.

The major events at the World Games seem to have been the Brazilian girls who went sunbathing topless on the beach - imagine that! - and the American teacher guy who went streaking past a rugby game. Those might have been sports in their own right, as good as tchoukball and fistball and the like.

According to my research, the Deaflympics will be the next sporting extravaganza to hit Taiwan, with a local model appearing naked at the opening with her painted body. Will Kaohsiung send its police to tell her to cover up?

Quite weird reading how the World Games improved Taiwan's image, considering nobody ever watched it. Europe was too busy looking out for those lads cycling around France in their colored shirts. The Deaflympics will not suffer a better fate, I'm afraid.

So what will put Taiwan on the world map? I guess it will be me, but I'll need another meeting with my friend from a couple of posts before to find out how and when. Anyway, it will be something sinister. You can always count on me for that.