May 16, 1995

I have made a good friend here in just the 3 weeks so far... Dave Turgeon.. a former New York Yankee minor leaguer who played third base with them from 1987 to 1990... he got as far as AA then was released... He then travelled to Holland and played over there as well as in France... but while overseas he tried his hand at pitching... and did very well... A tall lanky build has enabled him to make this change quickly... He pitched on our team here in their first year (expansion team in 1993) and had 18 complete games in 28 starts... then was offered a two year contract for around 200,000.00 US$ or about 8,250.00/month year round...He took it and had a tough year last year, after causing the manager to 'lose face' in front of the rest of the team... he was buried after that... meaning he did;nt pitch much and ended with only 83 innings in 1994...

He has pitched well so far this year, he owns a 4-3 record with an ERA of about 3.50 you see the newspapers all are in Chinese and I have to remember my chinese name and its characters to find out my stats... and they sign their autographs with chinese characters... I still don't have mine down!!

It looks like I will be able to send this out soon... Dave, George, Brian share one phone to call girlfriends and wifes back in the states... and I plan on getting a splitter and running a line to my room... nothing too hard but I want to make sure the guys know what I am up to... I need to get my e-mail and be able to see some scores from games in the states...

Even the TV is bad here... we get 2 american stations... both show I dream of Genie and old Pettycoat Junction re-runs... with a news flash every week it seems like... no CNN or ESPN... but they do have HBO Asia that is okay...I really need to see the wife and kid... but It is way too much to fly them over for 6 days... and I would never think of bringing them over to stay for any length of time... the team-house is really bad...

I think I have killed 12 -14 cockroaches in my room in the last 2 days... we were gome to Tainan, Tai Pei, Shin-Tsu for the past 2 weeks... and I did what they told me and sprayed raid all around the cracks and crevices in my room... but they had set up shop and were having a pow-wow right in the middle of my room... they all scatered when I opened my door and turned on the light...

they are all out now... once I re-applied the raid and swept the dead ones out the door... it is down-right homey!!!

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