These days
I was talking to another intern the other day and I confided in him that I was feeling pretty overwhelmed by my tasks at work. I am appreciate the faith my employers have in me but sometimes I am pretty sure I have, yet again, bitten off more than I can chew. He interrupted me mid-stream to tell me, "Look, at this age, if you aren't doing something totally overwhelming, something that challenges you, then you're doing the wrong thing. We're not supposed to know what we're doing."How awesome is that? I really appreciate his insight and I have returned to it everyday since I heard it.
I am getting more and more used to life here. There were a few rough days, like when I couldn't find a seamstress and I went back home and cried about it. The weird thing is, after moving so often, I just let myself have a bad day. I know the signs of culture shock, I know I'm not immune, but I never consider going home (as in back to the US). I just have a cry if I need it and then go back out and look for the damn seamstress again. And I did eventually find her, and she did hem my pants, and life was all good. I even found another fruit vendor and a really good Uighur lamb kebab stall.
Oh, by the way, I LOVE Uighur food. And, it is additionally awesome cause Uighur sounds like "wigger," and well, that's just pretty hilarious that there is a people-group called wiggers. Not PC, but it's my blog. Anyway, the little bit of Shanghainese food that I have sampled has been tasty enough and we had some delicious Sichuan the other night, but Uighur food hits the spot pretty much every time with a really great combination of salt and spice that makes the food flavorful and enticing. Not to mention that all the colorful peppers and the POTATOES. The Irish girl in me will never die, and along with this mutant Asian chick I am turning into, Chinese food that has lots of potatoes is pretty much manna from heaven. I am looking for a recipe for "da pan ji," but until then you can feast your eyes on this photo:
The weather is starting to get colder, and while I am glad to rest here for another month, I am wishing I had brought some sweaters with me from Taiwan. I guess right now it's still hot and humid there. The typhoon season is just wrapping up, and Lord knows they had a rough one. All the time I lived there, I always expected it to get cold around October, but it really never did until December or January. I think it's going to get colder a lot earlier here, though, and that is going to suck because I walk much of the way to work. Not that a scooter is much protection from the elements, but it does get you out of the rain faster. They have them here, but they are electric and they seem so insubstantial compared to what we were driving at home that they don't really entice me. And at the moment, still being new, where would I even go with one? And the roads are a lot more hectic here as well.
One last thing--we are going to get an aiyi, or a cleaning lady. It's super cheap here to hire someone to help you out at home, and a local aiyi can get good bargains on groceries, cook your meals, do your laundry and ironing, and keep things tidy. It's just that Beau and I are super busy, as is everyone here, and when I come home I fantasize about doing some yoga, reading, and working on my project, but all I actually do is cook dinner, eat, and fall asleep on the couch watching whatever it is we've downloaded recently. Then I rouse myself, hang up some wet clothes, put away some dry clothes, and do a half-ass job of sweeping. It's no joke that housework is a lot of work, and if you have other priorities it can seem especially burdensome, but it costs very little to hire a local grandma to help you out for a few hours a week and free you up to write the great expat novel. Right? Okay, I am obviously ambivalent about it, but I can't see any other way around it. Beau is actually an ideal roommate and he is very helpful and considerate so that the housework is split 50-50 in most respects, but it still takes up a lot of time.
a day in the life
As I was going to get lunch yesterday, two men approached me on the street and made a move to start wiping my shoes, telling me they wanted to shine them. I told them no, then I said it didn't matter, and then one came at me with a dirty cloth. I was peeved and I stomped my foot and shouted, "Bu yao!" like a three year-old, which made them retreat with nervous giggles. I walked another block before I realized they had managed to squirt my black heels with some white cream, which I had to wipe off with a leaf on the side of the street. I bought some flaccid dumplings for ¥4 but then I got duped into paying ¥40 for a bag of cherries, so I saved no money on lunch.
This is not what I looked like. But I thought this was a beautiful picture and I wanted to share it.
I stayed late at work to get some research and writing done for my own projects, only to spend an hour going over really horrid design ideas with my boss. I managed to tell him I had to go at 7:30 but before I could even go home, I had to pick up my pants from the seamstress. On the way there, I had to walk past a British guy on the phone who was having such a good time scratching his crotch through his gym shorts that he didn't even think to stop when I walked past. I went in, put everything away, got changed and got some more money to go back out and get some groceries for dinner. I tried to cook the rice first to get it out of the way, but I made too much and it burned before it cooked so I had to toss it.
Green Oil
This is the best stuff in the world for headaches and stuffy noses:
As I resign myself to spending the next two hours with a tiresome woman who speaks no English and insists that I speak only Chinese instead of idling away what remains of my day on Facebook and watching the second season of "The Big Bang Theory" for the third time, it helps to remind myself that I am paying her to come here. Grrrr...
I got tickets for a Sodagreen concert this weekend, and Lu Guang Chung is going to be there, too. I am by no means a connoisseur of mandarin pop music, Taiwanese or otherwise, but my language exchange partner introduced me to these two and I love listening to the music and I am really looking forward to seeing the show. It'll be an especially fun way to celebrate my birthday with a good friend. Not to mention KTV the night before. Between now and then, I am only listening to about five Taiwanese songs so I can sing along at karaoke and fake it at the concert. Everyone will think my Chinese is awesome and then I'll feign a severe case of misanthropy so they never know the truth, but the bar for foreigners all over Taiwan will be raised, unless of course my escort actually breaks out his impeccable Chinese, then we're all just screwed. Hit the books, boys and girls.
And my buddy and I had a good laugh today. She sported a very Taiwanese summer dress to work today and our co-workers couldn't stop gushing with all sorts of typically Taiwanese compliments--"Wow, you look good today!" and "Wow, you finally dressed very nicely"--compliments of the variety that might feel rather malicious if a Westerner offered them. It's not that she doesn't dress nicely. She often rocks the long peasant skirts or pretty tops with jeans that we think are especially nice, but it wasn't until she broke down and bought a local dress that any high school girl here would be proud to own that they all recognized she had a sense of style. Oh, Asia...
I am finally starting to get old. I can't go out during the week anymore because I know I have to pick out my clothes for the next day, get the coffee machine ready, pack some fruit and mung bean salad for work, and now I have to walk to dog.
We found a dog. He's cute as sin and seems pretty well-behaved. He seems to have some abandonment issues cause he gets really stressed out whenever someone leaves the room. He's an anxious little thing and he emits this nasal whistle whenever we get in the elevator. He is constantly furrowing his brow, which is totally charming.
He crashed our kindergarten performance. Thankfully, he showed up before the show had started, but while our 16 teachers, innumerable aunties and uncles, and nearly two hundred pre-school students and their parents were getting ready. Everyone was squealing and jumping, and I tried to toss him out twice but he kept coming back. Some of the mothers seemed genuinely afraid, even though he was just being nosy and friendly, so I tied him up out back in the hopes of keeping him out of trouble and out of harm's way. When the show was over, he was cold and crying angrily, but when I let him go, he didn't run away. He actually came back when I called him. When my beau showed up with a leash and collar, I knew we were in trouble.
I am rather nervous about this commitment. I tried rescuing a dog about two years ago, but it turned out he wasn't housebroken and apparently he cried the entire time I was at work, and I was working more than 8 hours a day, so I put him back where I found him after a few days. I also had the two cats for about 15 months, but I sent them home with my mom this summer because I was never home and they were just a handful. They were farm cats by birth and just weren't making the switch to life in a small apartment in a big city. Now, they have the run of my mom's five-bedroom house with a big backyard, and they are reportedly doing very well. I thought this puppy was adorable as soon as I saw him, but if my beau hadn't been so supportive, I wouldn't have really been able to agree to take him home.
Because my life has calmed down so much in the past few months and I do spend more nights at home that not, and I do manage to get coffee and breakfast before work and cook my own dinner and watch TV and movies on the weekends and I don't feel the same overwhelming pressure to constantly be out doing something, the obligation to go out every night and be with friends, then it seemed possible that I would be able to walk a dog every morning, afternoon and night and make sure he has food and fresh water. It's about as close to a baby as I am going to get at this stage in my life. I feel like it's a really big job, especially to take on so compulsively. So far, everyone is pretty enamored of him, so it's not much of a chore to take the newest conversation piece out for a walk, and I am just trying to breathe slowly and take it one day at a time in the hopes that everything will work out well for all of us.
noticeable improvements
I went out on Thursday night with some friends to welcome a new friend of a friend from back home. It was a legitimate reason and we had a good time, but I didn't get to sleep until 2, and that after a couple of drinks, so I was a little worse for wear on Friday. Fridays are especially long for me because I have to dash from my last class straight to the bus station to get to French class, so I indulged in an afternoon coffee from Mr. Donut. I nursed it all afternoon until the bus actually arrive in Taipei after 7. Lately, I have really cut back on my caffeine: I have a decaf coffee with breakfast and a green tea at lunch, then it's just juice and water for the rest of the day. I don't even really notice it, and I like to think that opting for green tea instead of coffee in the afternoon is not only a more healthy choice but an actual healthy choice because of the anti-oxidants and whatnot that are supposed to be lurking around in that popular urine-colored beverage. I went to French class and didn't sleep on the bus on the way there or back, which is weird for me, but I was tired when I got home and I was in bed by 1. By the time my beau crawled into bed beside me around 3, I was restless and irritable and I couldn't get comfortable or fall back to sleep. Obviously, the coffee was working its usual magic, but since I haven't been drinking it lately, I hadn't been suffering as much. It's just that I hadn't even noticed that I was sleeping better these days and that I was less irritable until I actually relapsed into my old habits.Likewise, with Christmas and its gift-giving obligations fast approaching, and not to mention our trip to Thailand during the upcoming Chinese New Year, I have been on a painfully tight budget. I haven't been going out to the bar very often, which is a huge step for someone who had just recently acknowledged being afflicted with CGOD (compulsive going-out disorder) and I have been cooking at home. Both of these decisions are a lot healthier--I get more sleep, I drink more water and less booze, I cook healthy meals without oil and sugar. I did go out on Thursday, though, and I did order food on Tuesday and Friday nights. If I subtract those three purchases from the amount of money I spent on other necessities such as gas, groceries, and bus fare to Taipei, I would have spent about two-thirds less than what I actually went through this week. So, again, I hadn't noticed that I was saving money so much until I opened my wallet this morning and realized there wasn't any left after indulging my old habits. So it's back to an early bedtime and cooking at home once again.
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These days, I've been eating food like you take medicine. It's like a new hobby of mine. I have been reading more articles online, experimenting with different recipes (as simple as possible so as to increase my chances of success and thereby keep myself encouraged and motivated) and really trying to eat a diet high in both protein and fiber. I make myself eat an apple a day, some other kind of raw vegetable (such as carrots or a simple salad with Romaine lettuce), and more recently, lots of cooked mung beans and sweet potatoes. By the time I eat the things I think I should be eating, I'm full and disinterested in indulging in less healthy options. Except for chicken wings. That buffalo hot sauce is like crack and I'm a recovering addict. I can't say no!
week without bars
So, yeah, it's Monday and I didn't go out, and I didn't go out last night, either. I am going to try to stay in every night until Friday, and then it's Halloween and there's always a good party on Halloween. It shouldn't be weird to stay home and read or watch TV or study some Chinese during the week, but for me it is. It's not even the drinking, because unless there's a full moon or something, I don't even get drunk. I just like being out, seeing what's going on, seeing what everyone else is up to. I've even taken to playing pool or shooting darts lately just to have another reason to go out.But I want to do more with my time. I would like to wake up well-rested and ready to teach, I would like to spend my evenings studying, writing, and reading and not dashing around like a sleep-deprived, caffeinated ferret. So I'll try to keep myself in for a week and see what comes of it. I have also committed myself to making dinner for myself every night this week.It really bugs me that I can't cook, that I rely wholly on the restaurants and vendors around here to provide food for me. Even when I do manage to actually put something in a pan, I am still using pre-made spices and ingredients. I'm not ready to buy a farm and start slaughtering chickens and growing cilantro or anything, but it seems like slowing down and taking the time to complete a human task like preparing a meal for myself would be better than scarfing down a box of dumplings while I read webcomics.
Yeah so I'll let you know how it goes, if I make it. I already made some chicken for myself tonight, even put the leftovers in the fridge for tomorrow. I found some easy recipes online, too, and a very good step-by-step illustrated guide to making the perfect omelet. Sweet!
you don't look this good for free
I just got my nails done. I have never had more than a very simple manicure two or three times in my whole life, and I went all out and got wicked long, pink, sparkly nails decorated with plastic jewels and strawberries.Yeah, I'm going local.
This is one of the things that I do as a woman that doesn't make any sense. A few days ago, I could rely completely on my sharply-honed fine motor skills. I could dress myself, put on jewelry, apply makeup, pick up coins off the floor, push elevator buttons, and rifle around in my purse without injuring myself. Now I find the most mundane tasks to be challenging. I had to ask my friend to button my shirt at work this morning and another to open my bottle of juice last night. But all the girls gush, "Hao ke aie!" and not being able to tie my own shoes becomes just one of those things we have to do to look good. I swear, put me in some high heels and a short skirt, and the most I'll be able to do is stand in the corner with a drink and a cigarette. As long as someone else lights it for me.
finally, a diagnosis
I was chatting with a friend last night about how I pretty much always need to go out almost every night before bed. I can sometimes trick myself into substituting the gym for a beer, which is so much better for me, but mostly, I feel a very keen yearning to go to the River and look inside before I go to sleep. I also can't go to sleep before midnight, even though I actually want to, because I am sure that if I go to sleep at ten, people will call me at 11 to invite me out, and if I don't go out because I am already in bed, I will probably miss a really great night. Which is unlikely, because I haven't done much on any given night besides go to the same bar and sit with pretty much the same people in the same spots having the same conversations about the same people for the past four years.Well, we don't always talk about other people. Of course, we do gossip because the foreigner community here is small and there isn't much English television and I am a drama queen with a big mouth after about, oh, two beers. But we also always have the same conversations about
1. the people back home who "aren't doing anything with their lives;"
2. accents: comparisons and contrasts, and making British friends say things like, "What's up, bitches?" until we fall off our bar stools laughing;
3. why we are still here after so many years and why we do and don't want to leave, knowing that because we are so ambivalent we aren't going to leave anytime soon;
4. our students; and
5. skeezy foreigner assholes who are hooking up with non-English speaking Taiwanese chicks.
After my friend and I went through that list--and I love his tirade against shallow men who are not only willing to date women who have less-than-conversational English but prefer to do so--we discovered that we both suffer from the same affliction, which he calls "compulsive going-out disorder" (CGOD). Us CGOD-sufferers get twitchy and restless just about the time everyone else is putting on their pajamas. We are acutely aware that someone, somewhere, and probably even someone we know, is getting ready for a great night and we want to be there. We have both been dealing with condition for much longer than just our time in Taiwan, and in the past, we both fixated on a particular spot, our arrival at which signified the closure of the night for us.
I think I first contracted CGOD when my college boyfriend used to drag my sleeping butt out of bed to go to the diner pretty much every night. We lived on a Christian campus with visitation policies and he liked to eat a plate of chicken wings whenever there was one available, so we'd usually end up at the diner hanging out til 2am (even if I had actually put myself to bed at 10pm). When we were finally old enough to drink, I felt particularly drawn to a local bar called the Wild Onion. I knew what kind of crowd to expect pretty much every night of the week, I knew the bartenders and the bouncers, and no matter where else I roamed, I wanted to be there for last call. Almost since arriving in Taiwan, River has been that spot for me. I kid you not--I moved into a nice place 20 minutes outside of Chungli, and probably would have finished the lease there except for I hated the inconvenience of calling a taxi to take me to and from River or the danger of driving myself home drunk. Even now, as I try to that place that has becomes the scene for every dramatic episode in otherwise normal life, I still go back and check in on the way home from anywhere else.
finding a boyfriend in this damned place
I was joking with a friend this weekend about how your standards for boyfriends/mates/potential life partners seem to drop as you get older. When I was in high school, I was making long, shitty lists in my diary about wanting to be with someone who was intelligent, had a good sense of humor, liked to read books, was honest, sensitive, outspoken, had a kind of Clark-Kent-thing going on with both muscles and glasses, etc. Now, I'm just trying to find someone who lives in Chungli, speaks English as a first language, and isn't currently putting it to anyone else.After spending most of my afternoon trying to coordinate plans with someone who doesn't teach kindergarten--which means she gets to sleep in all morning--I'd also add "works similar hours" to my list. These non-kindy types get to stay out til dawn at the bar and still catch a few Z's before they start work at the painful hour of oh, say, 2pm. Meanwhile I'm watching my social life meter hold steady at just above 'E' during the week because my co-worker/neighbor is my only friend that works a comparable schedule and I can only go sit between her and her husband on their couch and watch whatever weirdo TV show they are watching a few times a week before they start making fun of me.
I might just get a dog.