For the foreigners who refuse to acknowledge the existence of another person because they are a foreigner, I have a new strategy. I am going to point to their chest (female) or crotch (male) and laugh...I figure if they want to make me feel like I'm three inches, well, it's my pleasure to return the favor.
A new oxymoron - hip pack...because chances are, if you are wearing one, then you aren't.
My favorite Tarraism - anal ventriloquism - when you fart and make it sound like it came from across the room, particularly from the girl trying to flirt with your man.
another favorite Tarraism - iqity - the sum of intelligence in a room that influences the environment of the area and can fluctuate based on certain people...example: When Roger came in, I could almost hear the iqity of the room drop.
Okay, now for some blogging, I guess...
So here's my stand on relationships at this time. I am not in one, I kinda would like to be in one, but I am in no rush to have one because the status quo is perfectly fine for me too. I don't mind being alone since I am so used to it and I am not really lonely. Things are going pretty good for me, but they could stand a little tweaking, the kind I'd probably get from steady companionship. I travel around and go to interesting places alone which is nice because I can just meditate and think and don't have to compromise on someone else's whims, but I would also like that experience of sharing such special moments communing with nature with someone else. Moments like the sunset in Kenting which I hope to have posted on the travel page soon, swimming in the Pacific Ocean at the end of November, or even just sitting at Chiang Kai-Shek Memorial Hall on a lazy Saturday afternoon observing and watching people. It's nice to be alone, but I know it would be just as nice, if not nicer, to be sitting with someone for whom I held a strong affinity. Maybe someday...maybe.
December 4, 2002
Our play went off with few hitches, mainly being the stick breaking and one child brain farting on his lines, but everything else was great. I am so proud of those guys. I guess I can post my insights on children since it seems like everyone is having them all around me. I love children and can't wait until I have some of my own (Zoe Salina, Oscar Sebastien, Giselle Annique, and Liam Thibauld if I should make it up to having four children, God forbid!). I want to have three children, kind of the way my mother did it, but in reverse: two girls first who are close in age (if I can't have identical twins) and a boy last. But whenever I think about how great it is to have children, suddenly time speeds up in my mind and I think of how they are when they are first born, but are completely changed within just 6 months and in a year begin walking, 3 years can have a conversation, five years are off to school. Perhaps because I am around children this age I see this as a rapid progression, but also the thought that once you have children, you have them forever unlike houseplants or even (gulp) cats which might be around for a few years or so. I think about what I was doing five years ago (going into my first year of college) and how it doesn't seem like that long ago and then I see the different age levels from 2 to 6 years old and it makes me realize how short-lived parenthood of a child is. And plus society says that I should have a husband before I have a child and I can't even get a second date. How unfair is life that I have to wait for a man in order to have a child.
December 8, 2002
The funerals in Taiwan from a foreigner's perspective:
I have had the fortune of not needing to attend any funerals here, knock on wood, but even the worst American funeral cannot touch the average Taiwanese funeral. I am sure that in the past they were very beautiful and meaningful ones and while I don't think the thought has changed much, I think the invention of plastic was the downfall of the Taiwanese tradition.
Why plastic? Well, let me tell you what I have observed of funerals. First they begiun setting up the place where the funeral will be held. They set up a dirty faded red and blue striped tarp (I have yet to see a clean or unfaded one) over a metal frame big enough to be a makeshift garage (what I thought it was for the longest time just because of how ugly it is) and put a huge portrait of the person inside surrounded by...plastic flower wreaths of every fluorescent shade you can think of. And the flowers tend to be grungy or faded too. Then they set up sacrificial foods for them so they don't starve in heaven. Except they are canned food usually (no sense in wasting that stuff on the dead), set up like the pyramid displays you'd see in a grocery store. I have seen Taiwan Beer, Mr. Brown's Iced Coffee, and cans of poca chips (Frito Lay's way of edging in on Pringle's Asian market in canned potato chips with flavors like chicken, seafood, and vegetable) on display at a funeral. Then they put up lots more wreaths of more fluorescent plastic flowers up and down the street. Then comes the fun part. They load up a truck with more plastic flower wreaths, and blast a mishmash of cacophony from loud speakers. I am sure in the past that it was much nicer because it was done by real musicians, but with speakers on the back of a flatbed truck is just plain tacky.
Then there's the burning of paper money for their ancestors on the 15th of every lunar month. You can tell when that is because the air is completely white and horrible for breathing. They set out tables of food like raw chicken and fruits with incense stuck in them (for businesses) for the ancestors to eat. They burn the money so that the ancestors have money to spend in heaven (should have guessed that even heaven ain't free) and they burn paper effigies of things for their ancestors such as paper clothes (can't have naked dead people up there), paper cars (so much for wings) and even paper motorcycles. The people and businesses in the building where my preschool is have a tendancy to burn these things right outside of the preschool, when we are dismissing the children so they have to breathe all that smoke and get hit with ashes while waiting for their parents or amahs or nannies or drivers to pick them up.
I am sure that the thought is still there for honoring their ancestors, but do they have to be so tacky about it?
New impression of Japanese home life: They like their porn animated, their house automated, and their dogs robotic. Voil?, the new Japan.
December 15, 2002
I am going home in less than one week to visit my family for Christmas. I feel like so much has changed and that going home seems weird like it's a different life that I remember vaguely. I feel the love and connection, but aside from my mother, the people in my photographs have been memories to me or e-mails and instant messages that appear on my computer for the last year. It's a strange feeling that worries me a little. I'm not sure how I will handle mysef when I go home or if I'll be able to bring myself to get back on that plane for Taiwan. I spent Friday surrounded by friends and co-workers who have become a surrogate family to me. Not to say I no longer love my people, but they have moved on with their lives without me. My sister's graduating from college soon, my brother has a new baby, and my mother has a new boyfriend. Where do I fit in? It gives me a chance to think about my accomplishments here in Taiwan which are pretty big considering...but as far as friends and relationships go, I have very little to show.
On another note, I love watching people walking along a sidewalk who suddenly come up to a person they know. In a sea of unfamiliar faces when one suddenly pops up that you know is a moment that you can treasure. Of those hundreds of nameless faces, we two know one another and our circles have clicked in place, even if for a little while. I loved that feeling even when I was in college and maybe that's why I like living among large populations, just for those moments. I love people and I think they can be very interesting and beautiful creatures when observed.
Prev 1 2 3 4 5 6 Forward