Normal is Relative, anyway.

Saturday, October 6, 2007 – I don’t know what Day it is anymore – time to stop counting.

So much for my commitment of writing every day. Things have drastically improved in Kaohsiung – it’s amazing how much of a difference a solid group of friends and a new apartment can make in one’s life. We now live with a Costa Rican named Keylor in a brand new apartment at the corner of MeiShu 2nd E. Road and MeiShu 3rd Street. Or something. It is spacious and clean, with a gorgeous view of the Love River, the downtown city core, and Monkey Mountain. We only pay $140 CAD a month. Golden. Rachel has a scooter – I am still looking. I have started teaching; thankfully I am not as awkward at it as I am at most other things in life (pool, bowling, scooter-riding, etc.) I don’t want to go home when I wake up in the morning.

It’s strange how quickly one accepts certain normalcies (my Macbook is telling me that this isn’t a word…let’s roll with it anyway) Going to bed at 3 am and getting up at 1…normal. Chocolate and strawberry flavored cheese, eggs soaked in tea, smoking in bars, riding a scooter to work, saying “Neehao!” to my doorman (I have a doorman!) every night, sending absurd amounts of text messages because it’s cheaper than calling, all normal. Typhoons: normal. I was terrified that I wouldn’t ever adapt to life here, but in so many ways it’s really just like home, but the people are Asian and the writing on all the signs is all in Chinese. I saw a woman on the MRT in Taipei who reminded me of Auntee Judy. We have Subway, McDonald’s, Starbucks, Ikea, and Costco. Everything here is very modern and efficient; I am amazed every day at how many things make so much more sense here than at home, except for the movie theaters – we went to see Evan Almighty the other night and had to wait in line for almost ten minutes to buy tickets, and there was only one person in front of us. The ticket counter was the same as the concession stand which was on a different floor than the theater itself, and we had assigned seats in a nearly empty viewing room – I guess not too many Taiwanese people feel the need to see Steve Carrell as Noah in a language that they don’t speak.

Last night we found out that today Taiwan was going to be hit with a “Super Typhoon”, so all of our classes were canceled. We went out and spent the money we would have made getting stupendously drunk (that’s a lie…it was $9 for an all you can drink entrance ticket, and we lost precisely $120 today by not working…eesh. Time for me to start getting paid…) so today has been a cozy, rainy day. I don’t think Rachel has emerged from her room yet, and I have been relaxing, writing, reading, and enjoying being inside while the wind rages outside. It’s raining horizontally, if that’s even possible. My Douglas Coupland novel has provoked me to start reveling about my life – the protagonist in the book that I’m reading is in his thirties and is what I guess you would call your typical screw-up with a lack of direction. It occurred to me that I don’t have much direction either, and while I’m thoroughly enjoying getting there, could it be possible that I will end up as one of those archetypal twenty-somethings who moves back in with their parents because they don’t know what else to do with themselves and have blown all of the money that their friends seem to have for houses and cars on things such as drugs, (not me) booze, (ok, me) and oh, I don’t know, travels throughout Central America, Asia and the Pacific?? I have no idea what I want to do with myself, but I do take pride in the fact that for the most part I live in the here and the now and don’t think too much farther ahead of what I want to do for dinner, speaking of which...I'm pretty sure I can hear a large plate of fried rice and koh shing tsai (tasty green veggies to you) calling my name...