An American in Taipei

2003-05-10T21:02:00.000-07:00

I've decided to post all of my law school rantings on a separate blog, though it means that I will have to occasionally post here just to make sure that blogspot doesn't kick me out!! Check out my new blog at The Barrister's Dream. Please visit me!

2003-05-08T19:49:00.000-07:00

I'm back, and I'm really really cranky. It's been a weird year and it's only gonna get weirder.

So I left Taipei, in case some of you DON'T already know. And it seems like I left just in the nick of time since this means that I won't get quarantined for SARS. Which is really just terrifying. Last week, Berkeley announced that it was not allowing students from SARS affected countries from attending summer school. So draconian!!

I'm trying to stay positive. I tell everyone I know that I think the whole SARS thing is over blown and that people are now panicking for the sheer love of panic. I was going to go back to Taiwan over the summer, but now I'm thinking that's not such a good idea.....

Anyways, I'm going to Law School. There. I've said it. I'll be ONE L come September.

Life just gets more and more interesting, doesn't it?

2003-02-13T21:23:00.000-08:00

hmmm

2002-06-16T22:23:00.000-07:00

What the heck? Go away for a bit, and they take your page down. Sheesh.

2002-04-06T01:15:00.000-08:00

testing.

2002-04-01T19:31:00.000-08:00

So there was this stupendous earthquake that hit Taiwan two days ago (Sunday). Magnitude of 6.8 on the Richter scale, and apparently worse for Taipei than 921 three years ago. I wasn’t in Taiwan when 921 occurred (on vacation in the States – had a heck of a time trying to get back to Taiwan), so it was by far the worst earthquake that I have ever been through.

I was lying on my bed, not quite asleep but in that pleasant zone of being semi-conscious when I heard a cracking sound that seemed to reverberate through the city like a stealthy wave. Then the mosquito netting that hangs above my bed started to shake. Having been through several earthquakes in my time in Taiwan, I was basically nonplussed, and stayed in bed, ready to pit my will against Gaia’s. But the motion swiftly changed from a gentle swelling up and down to a more violent side to side, and that’s when I started hearing crashing, creaking and groaning. I dove off my bed and crouched next to the bed, far away from my desk, with its teetering piles of junk, having been taught once that the best place to be during an earthquake was in the “negative” space near solid, non-topplable furniture. Probably an urban myth, but I was luckily nowhere near the large, very heavy ceramic based lamp that with one final gasping tug at its cord, toppled off my desk and shattered on the floor. My room was literally haunted by poltergeist for the next minute: jars and bottles careened off the desk, drawers opened and closed like the orifices of some crazed monster, the large mirror hanging above my bureau swung in a ludicrous arc, mimicking that king of the jungle on his more versatile vine. Through the duration of the earthquake, my eyes were mostly riveted on that mirror, and I was trying to decide which would be more foolhardy: to stay in my position on the floor and risk being pierced by shards of broken glass should the mirror fall to the floor or rush to stabilize the mirror, risking injury due to falling debris. Newton’s first law got the best of me. I remained on the floor and, luckily, the mirror did not fall.

When the motion subsided, I stayed on the floor for a few more agonizing moments, expecting a recurrence. That’s when Mandy rushed into my room, her face covered in some sort of greyish charcoal mask. My mind still dizzy from the unnatural motion of being throttled, my first thought was, “oh my god, something collapsed on Mandy.” Then I realized that she was just wearing one of her many beauty masks.

“Are you ok?”
“Yeah, you?”
Mandy shook her head, “Do you know where Julia is?”
I shrug as I start to stand up with some trepidation.
“The living room is a mess.”

I peered out into our living room, and it was a mess – a large framed painting we had hung above the couch was now on the couch, and most of the books on our bookshelf were scattered in a cult-like half circle around the shelf. Lamps and lights were toppled over or leaning, anxiously, against the wall. The makeshift curtain that separates the living room from the kitchen was crumpled on the floor.

A ring of water was spreading on the floor where a vase had fallen off a table and shattered.

The worst damage was definitely in the kitchen, where a lot of our glassware had been thrown off their storage place atop the refrigerator and left a surprisingly beautiful mosaic of colored shards on the usually bland concrete floor. Some of our plates were broken and chipped as well.

But there were no broken gas lines, no busted water pipes, and the building, decorated with glaring gashes and cracks, seemed structurally sound. But Mandy was having none of my calm appraisal of the situation. She rushed into the bathroom (where nothing looked out of place, except for a bottle of shampoo knocked into the tub) and washed her face of its grey mask, before dragging me out into the streets.

“It’s safer if we get outside and away from tall buildings,” she said, “in case there are any aftershocks.”

The first thing I noticed as we walked to the nearest park was the hair salon just down the street. Women were sitting in front of the mirrors, their hair full of suds, ensconced in alien conical heating machines, or tin foiled, while the beauticians scurrying about snipping, clipping, braiding, curling. People seated in a hotpot restaurant, fishing with their chopsticks in their pots for a piece of meat or a fishball. Life goes on.

I grabbed a Diet Coke from the 7-11 (opened and someone already cleaning up whatever had spilled from their shelves). It is my absolute maxim that in case of emergencies, it is pivotal to have a Diet Coke handy.

We weren’t the only ones hanging out in the park. Mandy chatted with some of the locals congregating around a portable radio and found out that the earthquake had been in the 6’s and had originated in Hua Lian. We also found out that something had happened at the new skyscraper being built near the World Trade Center. (We later found out that a crane falling off the 56th floor of that building had caused the only 5 casualties in this earthquake.) Then Mandy and I sat in the park, enjoying the fairly mild Easter weather, trying to use our (basically useless) cell phones to reach friends and family. (All safe, Julia was with her man in a first floor coffee shop. He was slightly scalded by his coffee.)

“What do you think it would feel like if you were having sex in the middle of that earthquake?” I asked at one point.
“I don’t know, what a weird question.”
“Well, I was thinking that when the earthquake was happening.”
“You must be really desperate if that’s what you were thinking during that earthquake.”
“Well, I was thinking that you’d probably realize that an earthquake was happening and stop, and try to get somewhere safe, all the while naked and slightly, well, you know, sweaty and gooey. Which is already quite funny. But what I was really wondering was whether you could be so into the sex at the point that you wouldn’t even realize that there was an earthquake going on, and maybe you’d like have the very best sex of your entire life!”
“You need help, girl.”
“No, I’m serious. It could become a… compulsion, or obsession, or something like that. You could spend the rest of your life trying to be ready to have sex when an earthquake was happening so that you could experience that kind of orgasm again. Or maybe you’d move to an earthquake prone part of the world, or something.”

We spent most of the evening cleaning up our apartment. When all the broken glass and detritus was swept up and thrown out, we did a quick inventory. We found that all of our drinking wares were destroyed but for three standard glasses, three wine glasses, three mugs, and three small whiskey tumblers.

2002-03-28T23:47:00.000-08:00

I went to the Oriented kick off Happy Hour yesterday, which looked to me to be an astounding success. Of course, I was partly drawn there to secretly track down my detractors on Oriented.org, but I ended up skulking about quite incognito, spending most of the happy hour sequestered in a dark corner talking to a guy I met within minutes of stepping into Trader Vic’s.

I don’t even remember how I was introduced to Larry H., but it was quickly established that he went to RISD and I went to Parson’s and we did the name game thing. It turned out that we had several friends in common, a once rare occurrence for me grown so common that it’s almost become comical. One of my best friends from Parsons used to date one of his roommates at RISD.

Pleasantries past, and it turns out that Larry was starting his own design company in Taipei. Of course my eyes lit up at that. He had been working in the San Francisco area doing web-design and this and that until he got disillusioned with the entire dot com thing and came out to Taipei almost two years ago. He says he left just before the mass lay-offs, which really pissed him off because it meant that he wasn’t privy to any of the very sweet dismissal packages that came with the mass lay-offs. But it also meant that he could hold his head up high and say that he did not come to Asia as just one more recently downsized soul joining in the mass pilgrimage of lost souls.

After looking in Taipei for work in a market that has been just as bleak as the one in San Francisco, he decided that what he really wanted to do was to work for himself. Not because he didn’t work for some great people in the past: but because he just thought it was time. “Time for what?” I asked. “Time to put a stake in something that says, ‘yes, this is me, this is what I believe in.”

He does industrial design. Very similar to the stuff that my company does, which I think is why he was so willing to be sequestered for such a long time with little ol’ me when there were some rather tasty and eligible looking goodies sashaying about the bar. We started talking about our design philosophies, and although I didn’t completely agree with his point of view, I found it interesting… stimulating, even.

Which is why I’m finally writing in my blog again.

I find that I just can’t write about anything when my life ceases to stimulate me, which is a generous way to describe the way I’ve been feeling for the last few months. Work is busy, but dull, dull, dull. Even as a manager I feel as if I’ve nowhere to develop in this company. If I had kept my blog going for the last few months, I have the sneaky suspicion that the entries would have looked like this:

February 16 -- Boredom.

February 20 – Excruciating boredom.

March 1 – Mind numbing, excruciating boredom.

If all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy, then dull work and no play makes Jody a very very annoying and repetitive girl.

The very worst thing is that various contingents from the states (esp. the maternal unit) have been making loud, suggestive noises about me returning to the US. I wish that parents came with some sort of translation device so that the things that they say can be automatically translated into what they mean.

For example:

They say, “It’s very nice that you learn Chinese. But your Chinese so good now? Why you need to stay in Taiwan any longer?”

What they mean, “We let you go to Taiwan so you could meet a nice Chinese boy and get married. But you’ve been there for five years now and not even one real prospect! We’d better get you back here so that we can monitor your comings and goings so we can figure out how to marry you off before you become an old maid and nobody wants you.”

They say, “Old Lo’s son went to China, just like you, and now he’s a big banker with Goldman Sachs. He bought his parents a brand new Mercedes Benz when he came to visit them for Christmas, then they threw him a huge party when he come home in February. (sigh) We haven’t had a party for very long time, not since when your sister finished medical school.”

What they mean, “You haven’t succeeded in any way that let us make a big fuss over you and show you off to all of our friends. And why don’t you come home to visit more often?”

But in truth, there is some ironic twist of fairness going on here, considering the idiotic behaviour my parents had to endure when I was going through my precocious teenage years. Those years when there was nothing more embarrassing than having parents who were not like all the other parents on the block.

And I’m sure I’m reading more meaning into my mother’s constant reminders than she is putting into them. As a woman, when you reach a certain age (as I have), you start to wonder if everything you do isn’t just some warped reaction to prove someone else wrong.

There are those of us who work like bulldogs at our careers (*ahem* this would not be me) so that we can succeed financially and gain the kind of independence (from men) that our parents and various subversive elements of society have told us we could never achieve. Are we doing it to be the epitome of kick-ass, don’t rescue me, grrrl, or is it just so we can prove someone wrong?

And then there are those of us who talk a good game about being kick-ass, independent women, only to lose it at the pivotal age of 30 and go frothy (literally rabid) at the mouth at the first sight of a marriage-material guy. Do we really become maternal and marriage-crazy at the age of 30, or are we just trying to prove to the world that a woman isn’t more likely to be killed by terrorists than to get married after the age of 30?

So what I’m saying is that… those of us (women) who only talk how desperate we are to find a good man and get married are full of shit, and those of us who only talk about how we absolutely do not need a man to have full and fulfilling lives are full of shit. How deep is my philosophical trough today!

2002-01-31T11:28:00.000-08:00

Miserable, miserable weather. Constant rain and a searing cold that drives you to distraction. This is the Taiwan winter that I remember (and hate). It came late this year, but it’s already been a brutal few days. Every morning, my feet lodge their protest and refuse to yield. I have to use all my faculties just to drag them from their safe haven deep within the caves of my comforter. I’ve been having trouble getting to the office on time but try explaining to my boss that the reason I’m late is because my feet were up in arms (hehe…. up in arms… that’s funny).

Feet humour. You’ve got to love it.

After Alex dropped his little bomb about moving to Shanghai, we had a little bit of a talk about temptation. Then I read this today in a book by Michael Fishwick:

I used to be better at temptation. I just gave in to it immediately, without recognizing it for what it was. Much simpler. Now, I have a great battle, and argue with myself, and remonstrate, and will myself to be lofty and to take the rockier, narrower, steeper path.

And then I give in just the same. But temptation gets more banal as you grow older, because you have given in to more things and become used to them, and I think these outbreaks of higher moral tone compensate for that, and make the failure more terrifying, more interesting.

Lovely.

2002-01-28T19:39:00.000-08:00

An eerie fog of calm and resignation has descended onto Taipei. I suppose if I were to honestly reflect on the state of Taiwan society, I would have to say that the original tentacles of discontent appeared well over a year ago, but being notoriously self-absorbed, it has taken me some time to register the mood shift.

Within the past week, I have had no fewer than ten people tell me that they see themselves in Mainland China within the next two to three years. And I don’t know anyone. I’m sure my more famous fellow bloggers, Ms. Christine and Ms. Ginny, can point to many, many more who have already made more than tentative plans to cart off their stakes. Me, I was just sitting at Starbuck’s, having a leisurely cup of latte with one of my oldest friends in Taipei, Alex, who proceeded to tell me that he and his wife had already placed a bid on a place in Shanghai, and that he would probably be relocating by the middle of this year.

“What?!? Are you shittin’ me?” This was the point where rogue waves of latte started lapping over the edge of my mug and creating a moat of brown waters on the table. “You can’t leave. You’re like my lighthouse, my pillar of strength. The only reason I make it, year to year, in Taiwan is because I can think about you and know that you’ve been here even longer than I have.”
Alex chuckled. “I’ll still be in Asia. It’s not like I’m moving to the states, like all the other people who have passed through Taiwan.”
“But…” I wailed, “You can’t just leave. Who am I going to talk to?? Who’s going to commiserate with me about all the insanities of Taipei??”
“You could move to Shanghai too.”
“That’s so not a helpful suggestion.”
“Why not? It’s not like there’s anything holding you down here. And you’re always complaining about Taipei, your job, the *ahem* lack of available men here. Don’t you think that all of this is just a manifestation of an subconscious need to move on?”
“No. You know me. I complain about everything. Besides, there’s no guarantee that the man situation in Shanghai is any better than it is here.”
“Oh come on. Half a billion men in China…. with those numbers, even someone as neurotic as you is bound to get lucky.”
I would have smacked him at this point, except that I was too busy choking on my coffee.
“You mean you haven’t even thought about it?” Alex continued.
“Sure, I’ve thought about it. It’s hard not to with so many people obsessed about it.” I throw Alex my best evil eye. “I don’t know what I would do there though. At least when I first got to Taiwan, there was always the safety net of family and studying Chinese. At this point in my life, I can’t really justify going to China to study Chinese. And I don’t have any family anywhere on the mainland. Speaking of which, what exactly are you going to be doing in China?”
“Honestly, I don’t know.” Alex confessed. “But Li-fang’s [Alex’s wife –ed.] parents have already moved their manufacturing over the mainland, just a couple of hours outside of Shanghai, so they have really been pushing for us to move over to China. They want her to start getting involved in the family business.”
“How about you? Do they want you to start getting involved in the family business as well?” I teased him, knowing that he has been avoiding that particular trap ever since getting married.
“Sure,” he replied, guiltily, “I’m sure that they think that once we’re in China, I’ll no longer be able to resist their offers to become the CFO of the company.”
“As they say, resistance is futile.”
“Yeah, the Chinese… we’re like the Borg of the real world.”
I choked on my latte again. Rivulets of milky coffee in my nostrils. Yuck.

Honestly, though the man situation in Taipei is dire, I don’t actually think that I would fare any better in Shanghai. Every time another one of my male friends makes a return pilgrimage to Taipei from Shanghai (yeah, the pilgrimage to taunt the “poor suckers” who are not in China yet), they bring with them cheap China made knick-knacks and increasingly fantastic stories of their sexual exploits in China.

“All the women in Shanghai are tall and gorgeous.”
“I used to think that Taiwan had the most beautiful women in the world until I went to Shanghai.”
“Yeah, it’s no problem to get a threesome started in Shanghai. And I even know someone who participated in a foursome. Lucky bastard.”
“I can go home with a different woman every night! And I’m not talking skanky ho’s.”
“It’s eye candy everywhere you go. Unbelievable.”
“Shanghai is a total paradise for men.”
“The women there are so aggressive. You don’t even have to do anything. They come to you. It’s like I’m blowing on an invisible dog whistle.”

To all the men who have thought and said these things…. you pigs!! But let’s evaluate the situation…. with so much competition, what’s the chance for a short (though sweet) little Taiwanese chicky like me to snag a guy? Not likely!

The China phenomenon. One has to wonder if it’s going to end up in the same kind of disappointment that we’re all experiencing now with the burst of the internet bubble. But just like that bubble, it is so hard not to get caught up in the excitement, the enthusiasm. We need, crave that excitement to keep us sane. It’s like being in love, shopping, or having a really good conversation. Sensations to lift us out of the mundane. We can’t really live to clean the house, to write the same old press releases, to analyze the same old boring sales figures day after day after day. Thinking about China is like savouring a first kiss. You bring it to bed with you hours after it’s happened and it’s still there, curled up in your stomach. You lay in bed, half asleep, half awake, the blush still on your cheeks from thinking about it. You wake up hours before you’ve set the alarm and wonder if you’ve slept at all. Your blood is a little thicker. Your body is a little lighter. The world is different.

2002-01-27T17:35:00.000-08:00

Went out shopping yesterday. Not because I needed anything but because the weather was absolutely abysmal and I had nothing better to do. Mandy and Julia were both out somewhere, gallivanting with their boyfriends, I’m sure. They’re still in that first flush of love where nothing is impossible and everything is a lover’s secret. In other words, they don’t tell me anything except how wonderful their men are and the bare basics of their love lives.

I woke up near noon, and laid in bed for half an hour thinking about the wretched state the economy, wondered if I had won the jackpot in the new Taiwan Lottery (I hadn’t – my mother would tell me that I shouldn’t have wasted that NT$100!!), and decided that I needed to participate in stimulating the economy. So I went to the new mall on Fu Hsing.

Many of the stores were having their final clearance sales. Since most of the good merchandise had already been cleared out, there was also a lot of new spring merchandise. Digging through final clearance merchandise is like advertising in the newspapers for a date. It’s depressing as hell and unlikely to turn up anything worthwhile. Nevertheless, I had to give it a try, since my pocketbook is a bit too thin for full price spring goodies.

I had been through a significant portion of the mall when I finally meandered into the shoe section. Now any woman knows that a shoe sale has passed its nadir is when the size racks come out. Rather than organizing shoes by designer, color, style: in other words, rather than caring about presentation, the store heaves out a few industrial sized metal racks, and throw on them the left shoe of every remaining pair of sale shoes they have in stock. If you find the perfect shoe on the size 40 rack but you’re size 38? Tough cookies, baby.

In some ways it’s a phenomenal way of selling shoes. It’s better than the strip tease of seeing a perfect pair of shoe and waiting with agonizing expectation only to have the salesperson return empty handed.

The “36” rack was a multi-colored piñata. Most of the shoes were the fun, cutesy adorned pumps and flats that are favoured by the Taiwanese working woman. But in the midst of all that practicality, my eyes were immediately drawn to a pair of black strappy stilettos. Now even the occasional visitor to my site understands that to open my shoe closet (yes, I have a shoe closet) is to allow an avalanche of strappy sandal type shoes. But these were more than just another pair of black strappy stilettos. These were Jimmy Choo stilettos. These shoes were sex. Black satin. Pointy covered toe. Four inch heels. Delicate straps across and back. Beautiful.

I had to have them. I had to spend a huge chunk of my monthly salary to own them. And thank god for the two months bonus about to come my way for CNY (Chinese New Year).

But first, I had to try them on.

The saleswoman brought me the shoe’s mate. I slipped them on and they fit in only the way that stilettos can. They were the right size but were painful as hell. I pranced in front of the shoe mirrors and admired the way they looked – the way they elongated my leg, slimmed and lifted my calves.

That’s when I noticed this really hot guy sitting on a nearby seat in seeming mutual admiration of my shoes. Of course, my left foot took that moment to stumble (contrary to public opinion, I have not mastered the art of walking in four inch heels). I realized how utterly pathetic I must have looked. I was wearing a pair of oversized olive khakis the legs of which I had folded up above my knee in order to model the shoes. My hair was disheveled from the rain and shopping. But when he caught me looking at him, he smiled at me broadly and gave me two thumbs up.

Ok… I would kill for a man with a smile like that.

Just then, I heard a shrill shriek and out of the corner of my eye I caught a blur of beige and orange stampeding towards me.

“Oh my god! Joooooodyyyyyy!!”
Oh lovely, I thought, as the blur enthusiastically swooped upon me and threw her arms around me. Helena.

Helena is one of the most sinisterly annoying people I know. I have no idea when or where we met, but she has apparently committed my name and face to memory so I can never feign disavowal upon our few chance encounters. Inanely cheerful, she is one of those people who uses excessive playful demonstrativeness as substitution for a personality. For all her gushy, girlish chatter, I have yet to have a conversation with Helena where I actually leave with a sense of who she is. However, it seems to me that I would become an instant pariah if I were to actually overtly dislike her. Her childish glee protects her from my sour malevolence.

“Helena, how are you?”
“It’s been soooooo long.” Her eyelashes flutter down at me (no, really, she actually does flutter her eyelashes) “What are you up to?”
“Just shopping, you know, the usual.”
“Me too!! What a coincidence! And I never go shopping but my boyfriend insisted on taking me here and buying me a gift for our one month anniversary.” She giggles.
“Your boyfriend?” I asked, my curiosity immediately piqued.
“Yes, haven’t you met Billy? Billllyyyy.” She turns around and gestures towards the adorable guy who had been checking out my shoes.
That guy? I thought to myself: uh uh, no way. No way could she be going out with a guy that hot. Of course, Helena is perfectly adorable. She’s slightly taller than me, unusually curvaceous for an Asian woman, with round, apple-y cheeks and large round eyes framed with long, fluttery eyelashes (have I mentioned that she actually flutters her eyelashes). But the hot guy was getting up off his seat and approaching us with a long, bowlegged gait. My worst fears realized. There isn’t a God.
“Billy. This is Jody. You remember Mandy from that party we went to last week [Last week? Hello? Where the f- was I? –ed.]? Jody’s her roommate.”
He reached a well-toned, beautifully tanned arm out and grasped my limp right hand in his. I could only offer a weak half-smile.
“Hey. Billy.”
“Jody,” I countered.
“Are you buying those shoes…. *gasp* oh my god!! They’re so amazing. You’re so lucky. I looked at all the shoes in size 34 and there was nothing I liked at all. Aren’t they amazing, Billy?” Helena squealed.
“Yeah,” I said, carefully stepping out of my new treasures, “They’re great, but I’m going to have to get used to wearing them.”
“Oh, it’s easy. You just have to pop a painkiller before you go out in them. No problem.”
Billy piped in, grinning, “She should know, she has a whole boatload of those kinds of shoes.”
Helena used her shoulder to give him a playful nudge and then leaned into his broad chest. I could feel envy coursing all the way to the ends of my hair.
“So….” I stalled, straining for conversation, “what did you end up getting for your anniversary?”
Helena held up a well-manicured hand. Around the wrist was strapped a delicate Chopard happy diamond watch. “Isn’t it beautiful?” she gushed, “Billy totally spoils me.”
I was a Kermid wannabe.

Some girls have all the luck. [next entry]

2002-01-15T23:11:00.000-08:00

Aaaargh!! The story of my life:

They have finally found a diagnosis for my condition. Hooray!!!! I have recently been diagnosed with A. A. A. D. D. (Age Activated Attention Deficit Disorder).

This is how it goes: I decide to wash the car; I start toward the garage and notice the mail on the table. OK, I'm going to wash the car, but first I'm going to go through the mail. I lay the car keys down on the desk, discard the junk mail and notice the trashcan is full. OK, I'll just put the bills on my desk and take the trashcan out, but since I'm going to be near the mailbox anyway, I'll pay these few bills first.

Now, where is my checkbook? Oops, there's only one check left. My extra checks are in my desk. Oh, there's the coke I was drinking. I'm going to look for those checks. But first I have to put my coke further away from the computer, oh maybe I'll pop it into the fridge to keep it cold for awhile.

I head towards the kitchen and my flowers catch my eye, they need some water. I set the coke on the counter, and uh oh. There are my glasses. I was looking for them all morning. I'd better put them away first.

I fill a container with water and head for the flower pots..................aaaaaagh!!!!

Someone left the TV remote in the kitchen. We'll never think to look in the kitchen tonight when we want to watch television, so I'd better put it back in the family room where it belongs.

I splash some water into the pots and onto the floor, I throw the remote onto a soft cushion on the sofa and I head back down the hall trying to figure out what it was I was going to do?

End of the Day: The car isn't washed, the bills are unpaid, the coke is sitting on the kitchen counter, the flowers are half-watered, the checkbook still only has one check in it and I can't seem to find my car keys. When I try to figure out how come nothing got done today, I'm baffled because I KNOW I WAS BUSY ALL DAY LONG!!!!! I realize this is a serious condition and I'll get help, BUT FIRST I think I'll check my email.................

It's strange. I spent a lot of the past year being bored out of my mind. Bored at work, bored with life. Now I'm so busy with stuff I don't have time to think about whether I'm bored or not. I think I still am, but at least I'm no longer spending time picking lint out of my navel.

I'd really love to do something that's meaningful, something that is my own. How many of us feel this way out there? This is the kind of restlessness that breeds revolution!! [next entry]

2002-01-08T23:39:00.000-08:00

I had a wonderful New Year, and took some time off to be by myself, which wasn’t hard, since both my roommates returned to the United States to celebrate the holidays with their families. I didn’t, because of aforementioned crisis within my family, mostly having to do with a conflict between my sister and myself, but that’s too complicated to discuss today. Needless to say, I talked with my parents over the phone a couple of times in December, and we unanimously decided that it wouldn’t be a bad idea for me NOT to come home this Christmas.

I comfort myself by saying that Christmas isn’t all that relevant a holiday in my situation (I’m Buddhist) and that my parents are always super busy during the Holidays with work. But it still kind of stings to know that I was basically abandoned during the prime feel-good season.

I cleared a lot of cobwebs (from my mind and from my apartment) during my week of basically forced solitude (no human interaction outside of work). I did some sketches, visited some art galleries here in Taipei, and actually went up to the National Palace Museum (one of the most fabulous museums in the world, imho) for the first time in two years or so. I didn’t write at all: decided that sometimes, writing makes me a bit too introspective for my own good.

My New Year’s resolutions:

(1) To quit smoking. Wouldn’t be hard if I wasn’t so damn addicted.
(2) To stop getting involved with irresponsible and inappropriate men.
(3) To stop myself from always coveting what others have (good relationship, good job, good dog, whatever.)
(4) To actually finish something that I set out to do. [next entry]

2001-12-28T00:46:00.000-08:00

A Merry Christmas to all and a Happy New Year.

Now where's that damn bottle of aspirin. I've got a hangover from hell.

I tried to find an English service to attend on Christmas Eve. I succeeded once, a few years ago, at a Presbyterian church down near the National Taiwan University. But no luck this year. I tried 5 churches in one evening, all of which have English services on Sundays, but which have all decided to do away with their English Christmas services. I guess that the turnout has been poor in the last few years (not surprising, since I assume that a large percentage of the foreign residents try to take their holidays back "home"). Although I was a bit peeved, I guess these Houses of Worship have decided that their word is better served in the local language on Christmas. Anyways, I guess I've discovered a new way to spend vacation time.... Church hopping. (Church crawl? Chupping?)

Alas.

Not that I'm Christian. But I do love a good hymn. And I can even sing a few of them. I will not, however, be recording myself singing a hymn and posting it on this website. : p [next entry]

2001-12-19T00:42:00.000-08:00

There is a strange disease that afflicts people who move to Taiwan and stay here just a little bit too long. I call it Taiwan-smokaholism. You see it everywhere: expatriates who are normally preachy “I’m such a health freak”, beaming with white bread goodness, oozing with red-meatless freshness PITAs (Pains In The Asses) turn into these shifty, furtive creatures cowering in corners and shrouded behind building pillars fingering their last or next cigarette.

Yes, I belong to this tribe of puff puff smokaholics.

It’s so easy to fall into the trap in Taipei. There is no anti-tobacco mafia here that cordons off prime real estate from the smokers. It is still the norm to walk into a restaurant or bar in Taipei and leave covered with the sticky smell of stale smoke. And the sex and the city girls make it look so urbane. So un-so-cal.

And we city types love to hate so-cal.

I remember justifying it the first time I was called on my puff puff smokaholism. I was in a bar with a bunch of fresh-faced Chinese students who had just arrived in Taiwan no more than a month prior. I reached for the ashtray without thinking and hoisted my pack of Camel Lights and my pornographic lighter (everyone has a pornographic lighter in Taiwan) on to the table.

“You smoke?” One particular wide-eyed freshman stared at me, disbelief flooding her facial expression.
“But that’s so nasty!” Said her companion, her nose scrunched up in displeasure.
I rolled my eyes and rolled a cigarette (ok, I didn’t actually roll a cigarette, but I wish I had…)
Between drags, I explained, “You’ll see. The air quality here is sooooo bad. I know a guy who used to jog in Taipei. He wanted so badly to keep in shape while he lived here (which was really difficult at the time, due to the general lack of health clubs). But when he went back to the states, he had a check-up, and his doctor showed him a x-ray of his lungs….” I paused for dramatic effect. “His lungs were so blackened from all the pollution and motor exhaust and shit that he was breathing in when he was jogging that he might as well have been smoking a pack of cigarettes a day for a year!”
The look on those kids faces…. priceless

Ok…. So it was a total Urban Legend.

I never knew the guy. I only knew a guy whose girlfriend used to date a guy that worked with the guy. Anyways, you get the drift.

My friend Mike has a real problem with Taiwan-smokaholism too. Since he spends three-quarters of his year in the US (and in SoCal, no less), he is generally one of the most disgustingly health obsessed individuals that I know. But once he hits the ground in Taiwan, it’s like the pack of cigarettes just magically appears in his back jean pocket. He hates the fact that he succumbs so easily to the lure of nicotine when he’s here, so he always spends his three months in Taiwan having this neurotic love-hate relationship with cigarettes. He’ll do things like buy a pack of cigarettes, smoke one, and then give the rest to some lucky chap standing on the street corner. Or he’ll make himself go outside to smoke, even when he’s in a bar that’s so dense with smoke that you have to duck down to find people. He thinks that if he makes his life difficult, or ruins himself economically, it would be incentive to quit.

And the only reason I write this is that I find myself sneaking outside to smoke – more and more often. Because I don’t want my boss to find out that I smoke. Not that my boss doesn’t covet the occasional Gauloise himself, but, you know. We all have our images to maintain. [next entry]

2001-12-18T01:40:00.000-08:00

Yes, I’m a horrible person. I’ve let this blog down, and I don’t actually know why. I could say that I’ve been working on my novel, and although I have the beginnings of something that I think is amazing, I don’t actually have anything down on paper (I had almost 50 pages, then I ripped them up and started over again). Sigh.

I could say that I’ve had a lot of trauma to deal with in my personal life, and that would sort of be true. Things between Rob and I didn’t go quite as expected. In fact, quite the opposite and I’m not sure how to reconcile all the horrid things going through my head about this particular experience. And on top of that – I’m having a bit of a crisis on the family front right now…

The weekend started perfectly. Blissfully, actually. Rob picked me up from the airport in Singapore and it was as if we hadn’t lost six year. We caught up on each other’s live and giggled over several unfortunate escapades that he dragged me (yes, dragged me) into when we were together six years ago.

The “junk” that we were borrowing for the weekend was more like a yacht. I’m not sure why Rob and his friends kept referring to it as a “junk” except out of some pretentious desire to capture the exotic-ness of the moment. It was a completely modern boat (I don’t know anything about boats, so don’t even try to get me started on explaining this thing), gorgeous wood paneling everywhere. Two levels, the lower was enclosed with glass and the upper was outside, bordered with waterproof leather seating for lying-out on. It definitely felt lap of luxury. Rob and his friends hired a sailsman (giggle) for the weekend to drive.

We basically spent the weekend sailing to these little islands, which I think belong to Indonesia, but are the pleasure grounds of the far wealthier Singaporeans. We had rooms on Bintan, which is very resort-y, but since we spent almost all of our time swimming and lounging about in little abandoned island alcoves, I saw very few people all weekend. The weather was glorious, and a much welcome reprieve from Taiwan weather, which was starting to turn into the grey muck of winter.

Rob was the epitome of the gentleman the entire weekend: the most risqué thing that we did was sitting side by side with his arms slung around my shoulder. I’m sure his colleagues (both male) were a bit confused about the nature of our relationship (ummm… actually, for most of the weekend I was too). I wasn’t not giving out signals, but I’m not completely sure what signals I was giving out, exactly. Although I was having a great time talking about literature, music and Asia with Rob (our great passions and shared interests), I didn’t necessarily get that zing from being around him that I remembered feeling, once upon a time.

After dinner on the second night, he did come to my hotel room (yes, I had a separate room, and Rob paid for it, bless his generous heart) with a bottle of Chardonnay, and we sat outside, under starry skies and talked about deeper things. About how difficult it was getting to relate to our families, who live so far away, about becoming more and more entrenched in work and in corporate entities. Rob’s always had a bit of the rebel spirit inside him, and although he in an enviable position - he’s basically living in HK on an expat package – he feels like he is sacrificing a lot of himself by working for a large, non-organic corporation. Selling his soul to the highest bidder, so to speak.

We chatted about that for a while, not coming up with anything that even felt vaguely like a satisfactory answer.

Then Rob told me about Heidi.

Rob met Heidi in Papua New Guinea. They dated for about a year before she moved to Hong Kong and he stayed in PNG for another three years. They continued to talk and visit each other for the entire time that he was in PNG and then the opportunity arose for him to move to Hong Kong. Rob told me that his decision to take the job was as much due to the opportunity to be near Heidi as anything else.

This was where I started to get the sinking feeling in my stomach.

Ever since he got to Hong Kong, Rob’s been spending most of his free time with Heidi. In his words, they were getting “serious”. And recently, Heidi’s been hinting at wanting to move in together. Out of practicality. Because rent can be so expensive in Hong Kong. And Rob’s been hemming and hawing.

“I don’t know why,” Rob said to me, “I really love being with her, and we both have horrible work schedules. If we moved in together, that would mean that I could spend all of my free time with her.”

That’s when he found my old letters. And apparently, they evoked irrepressible memories in him.

“I was getting very nostalgic,” he said, “and I had always wondered what had happened to you, and why we didn’t keep in touch. So I thought I had to at least TRY to find you.”
“And find me you did.”
We laughed.
“You’re going to hate me for this.” Rob’s voice got serious, as he looked into my eyes.
“Go on… I already know what you’re going to say.”
“I just thought that if I was still having nostalgia for us,” he gestured at the two of us, “I couldn’t possibly be very serious about Heidi. So when you actually replied to my postcard, I thought it was some sort of sign.”
“Some sign,” I muttered.
“And you know now that I’m basically a horrible person for inviting you on this trip.”
“What exactly does Heidi think you’re doing this weekend?”
“Well, I already had this trip planned with Lance and George (the two colleagues traveling with us –ed.) and originally, Heidi was supposed to come with us. But then she had scheduling conflicts and had to be away on business this weekend. That’s when I invited you.”
I punched Rob (lightly) on the shoulder.
“What do Lance and George think?” I asked.
“Uh… they think I’m a player.” He grinned, slightly painfully.
“Great,” I moaned, “and I’m the duped.”
There is a thick pause.
“It’s been so nice seeing you. I smile whenever I think about you, because I always think about you all fiery and passionate, talking about books or movies or the piece of yarn that is attached to the end of your sleeve. I love that about you. But I haven’t been able to stop thinking about Heidi all weekend either, and feeling guilty.”
“For misleading her? Or for misleading me?”
“Uh… both?” he said sheepishly. “But mostly the former.”
“I guess you’re going to be asking her to move in with you this week, huh?”
“Yeah, I guess so.”

So, another lesson about me that you all can take away from this…. I drive men into the arms of other women. *Sigh*

No, seriously, I think that I knew, even upon accepting Rob’s invitation that nothing was going to happen. Our “relationship” didn’t even last a day of long distance the first time, and it certainly wasn’t going to be revived over long-distance. But when you get to be my age, you start placing a certain amount of “faith” into things that deserve none.

Family problems tomorrow. I’m too depressed from having just re-lived that weekend. [next entry]

2001-11-28T01:01:00.000-08:00

Things are ridiculously MANIC at work. But I have so so so so so much to write about. I will get around to it soon, I promise.

2001-11-08T22:51:00.000-08:00

Isn’t it strange how you can go ages without seeing someone and then you run into them every day for, like, a month? Well, I saw “Spudhead” again. This time at a Szechuan restaurant just off Tun Hua. He wasn’t with his girlfriend, instead, it looked like he was with a bunch of his work buddies. What a bunch of suit and ties! And they were really loud – in the way that rich looking suit and ties can be when they get together and have one bottle of Taiwan Beer too many.

Anyways, although we’ve seen each other twice in the last two weeks, his eyes registered absolutely no recognition when Elly and I first walked through the doorway even though, men being men, all of the suit and ties’ heads pivoted around when we first walked through the door. They were sitting around a large, round table and heaped on top the Lazy Susan was a vast assortment of dishes, most half empty. Through the meal, I would occasionally glance over at their table – especially when their cavorting turned especially riotous (at one point, one of the men slapped their waitress on the ass, eliciting a loud shriek and a dropped dish). “Spudhead” looked like he was just as engaged in the joviality as the others, eating and drinking and making a general nuisance of himself. I just wondered when he would excuse himself to go upchuck in the Men’s room.

I’m such a bitch.

Anyways, the real reason that I was out last night was because Elly invited me to dinner. Which was nothing unusual. Although we see each other all the time (Elly lives right upstairs from me), we haven’t really had a chance to chat recently, since we run on very different schedules and with very different crowds. Elly’s such a fabulous person: she’s sincere, genuinely sweet and fantastic looking to boot (she’s a model for some of the local fashion magazines – although she’s almost 30, she can easily pass for 19 or 20). Unfortunately for the men of Taipei, she’s also very, very taken. Dave, her sweetie, swept her off her feet almost four years ago, and they have what I think of as the perfect relationship. They are cloyingly sweet when they are together – you can’t help but smile in a hushed, fascinated way when you see them together. But they also manage to have these enormous, extroverted lives without each other. There’s no co-dependence here!

So halfway through the meal, Elly finally reveals some really awful things that have been happening at Dave’s office. Dave works for a local investment bank as an assistant manager in their research department. Dave’s been at this job for about three years, ever since he graduated from business school in Australia.

“So one day, Dave gets an email saying that he has a quota of some 2 million shares of a company mutual fund that he and his subordinates have to sell. And that if he doesn’t fulfill the quota, it would be recorded as poor performance at his year end review.”
I stare at Elly blankly. I hate financial jargon. “I don’t understand. What does that mean?”
“Well, I think that because his company may not meet its sales projections, they are pushing all of their non-sales employees into doing sales.”
“I still don’t get it,” I said.
“Ok. So the company has this mutual fund, and their regular salespeople haven’t been able to find buyers for it – mostly because the market’s just crap. So they are telling their other employees that they either have to sell it to people they know, or buy it themselves, or else they’re not going to get good year end reviews.”
“How can they do that? Isn’t that illegal?” I asked, incredulous.
Elly looked at me for a moment, eyes blank with incomprehension. It figures. The foreigner comes into this country and start seeing lawsuits in everything.
“No,” she replied, hesitantly, “I mean, theoretically Dave can quit or he can take the bad review if he doesn’t want to fill the quota.”
The awkward moment having passed, I pressed on. “So what’s Dave going to do??”
“He’s totally livid. He’s been off the wall since he got this announcement last week. According to his manager, he’s suppose to distribute his quota among the analysts that he manages. So when he gives his analysts their year end reviews, he can also use missed quotas to justify not giving them raises or even a bonus. But if any of his analysts miss their quotas, then he’ll miss his, and he’ll get a bad review.”
“Yeah, but so what? So he won’t get a raise. Big f-ing deal.”
“Well, he’s worried because he thinks the company will use this quota thing to justify laying off even more people.” Elly conceded.
“How much do these mutual funds cost?”
“For all 2 million shares, Dave and his analysts basically have to raise two and a-half million NT dollars.”
“SHIT!!” I did some quick math in my head, “That’s like 70,000 US Dollars.”
“Yup. And because Dave has 5 analysts under him, that means he’ll probably have to split it so that each analyst is responsible for about $10,000 and then he himself will be responsible for $20,000.”
Elly paused dramatically, and then lowered her voice conspiratorially, “And you know, it’s not like they pay the analysts anything. They are a local firm, and local firms really pay shit.”
“I would quit,” I asserted emphatically.
“No, you wouldn’t. You’re always talking about quitting your job, even though you still keep going, day after day.”
I looked at Elly sheepishly.
“And you know that the economy is just crap. Most of these people don’t know if they can get another job if they quit. They’d rather just pay out the 10,000 dollars, and keep getting their thirty-thousand-a-year paycheck.”
“I guess.”
“Dave’s really been mean since this all happened. He’s always in a terrible mood. He hasn’t told his analysts yet, because he’s really good friends with some of them, and he feel ashamed that he has to push such a ridiculous and petty thing down their throats.”
“Oh.” (Yeah, I’m a real wizard with comforting words.)
“So he’s either been staying really late at work because he’s trying to work harder to make up for what he has to do to his analysts, or he’s been out drinking – I’m really getting worried. Every time he goes out drinking now, he comes back stumbling drunk. It’s not healthy!”
“I don’t know what to say. I feel really bad for Dave,” I sympathized.
“Yeah, I feel bad for Dave too. And for myself.” Elly replied, morosely. “Dave hasn’t really talked to me since this all happened. I feel like we’re two completely separate and isolated bubbles. We might as well not be living together. And I have to be so careful whenever I’m around him. I can say things, completely innocuous things, and he’ll take the wrong meaning and just blow up.”
Elly looked at me, her eyes bleary with the beginnings of tears. “I just don’t know what I should do.”
I gave Elly’s hand a squeeze, hoping that my silent support could do more than what would be no more than meaningless suggestions.

So the world is not a perfect place, and when perfect relationships hit speed bumps, all the occupants get jostled, just like us mere mortals. Elly and Dave have already had to deal with so much – and I’m sure they’ll make it through this thing. But I can’t help but be surprised that even Dave, sweet and helpful and laid-back Dave, would let things in his work life to tear apart his personal life.

What is it about the modern career that makes us put it in front of everything else? I know that personally, when I feel like I’m doing something meaningful, with growth opportunities, and (of course) a good salary, it really doesn’t matter what else is going on in my life. I can almost ignore (or at lease put up a good illusion of ignoring) the fact that I can’t find “the perfect man”, the fact that I’m several thousand miles away from my family, and the fact that I’ve gotten into such a rut that I’ve forgotten half the reasons I came to Taiwan in the first place. But if things at work aren’t going well… well, then I turn into a nightmare of a monster. Imagine a hundred women all experiencing PMS at the same time. Now magnify that by 5 or 6 times. You do not want to mess with me if I’m unhappy at work.

Work’s just work. I try to make this my mantra. But it’s much easier said than done.

***

I got this email from a friend today. It totally made my day:

Bumper Stickers for Ladies

SO MANY MEN, SO FEW WHO CAN AFFORD ME.

GOD MADE US SISTERS, PROZAC MADE US FRIENDS.

COFFEE, CHOCOLATE, MEN ... SOME THINGS ARE JUST BETTER RICH.

DON'T TREAT ME ANY DIFFERENTLY THAN YOU WOULD THE QUEEN.

I'M OUT OF ESTROGEN AND I HAVE A GUN.

WARNING: I HAVE AN ATTITUDE AND I KNOW HOW TO USE IT.

OF COURSE I DON'T LOOK BUSY...I DID IT RIGHT THE FIRST TIME.

DO NOT START WITH ME. YOU WILL NOT WIN.

ALL STRESSED OUT AND NO ONE TO CHOKE.

I CAN BE ONE OF THOSE BAD THINGS THAT HAPPENS TO BAD PEOPLE.

HOW CAN I MISS YOU IF YOU WON'T GO AWAY?

DON'T UPSET ME! I'M RUNNING OUT OF PLACES TO HIDE THE BODIES.

IF YOU WANT BREAKFAST IN BED, SLEEP IN THE KITCHEN.

***

In celebration of spontaneity, I decided to go to Singapore for a long weekend next week. I leave on Wednesday. I know – why Singapore? That’s hardly spontaneous… in fact, that’s downright boring! Ok. The deal is, I’ll be spending the whole weekend with Rob. Apparently, one of the perks of his job is that he has access to the company yacht, which is moored down in Singapore. (A company yacht?? I’m in the wrong profession. I’d be lucky to work for a firm that had a company scooter.) Apparently, Rob is a great sailor and he offered to take me sailing for three days. Ok – how can I refuse that? I know nothing about boats, and I’m not a terribly strong swimmer, so I have some trepidation about this whole trip. But Rob assured me that it will be perfectly safe. And before the lot of you start getting funny ideas in your head, it won’t just be Rob and me. Two of his friends (and colleagues) are coming as well. [next entry]

2001-11-06T01:19:00.000-08:00

The strangest things have been happening to me recently. It’s enough to set the warning bells a blazing. But mostly, I chose to ignore my own intuition, which is what always gets me into trouble.

A few weeks ago, an ex-colleague invited me to a dinner party. She and her husband have a lovely apartment on Ren-Ai Road, a wedding gift from her husband’s parents (I know, we should all be so lucky). She’s about six months pregnant, and she has a wonderful, bulbous, maternal shape. When I first saw her, I was reminded by something an ex once said to me. We had been talking about pregnancy – not because I had conceived a child or anything like that – but simply because we were at that young and tender age when our (older) friends were starting to have children, and it was still sufficiently rare and unfathomable that it made for a highly provocative topic of discussion. I was, in the throes of infatuation, trying to talk up the beauty of a woman in the midst of pregnancy. I brought up all the clichés: that a woman glowed, that she grew more beautiful, etc… with pregnancy. I was fishing for some indicator of our compatibility. I wanted him to concede a woman’s maternal beauty. Somehow, this would indicate that he could see me in this role: that even should I gain 20, 30 pounds, I would still bee attractive to him.

He shot my expectations down like a WWI flying ace downing an enemy biplane. “What a bunch of bullshit,” he proclaimed, “a pregnant woman is just a fat woman, and they say those things to make themselves feel better for losing their looks.”

Ok. So that relationship didn’t last very long.

Anyways, as evidence contradictory to my ex’s callous proclamations, Hsiao-Chiu truly beamed. She was absolutely radiant, and smiling from the moment she opened the door to let me in to the moment we embraced good-bye at the end of the evening. I don’t think I have ever seen her look quite so pretty. Now this brings me up to my second point. There is an old Chinese wives’ tale about the sex of a child. Ok, there are many, many Chinese old wives’ tales about the imminent sex of any newly conceived child. But my favorite has to be the one that says that a woman who grows prettier during her pregnancy can expect a girl and a woman who grows ugly during her pregnancy can expect a boy. Talk about your ultimate win-lose proposition. Obviously, with the Chinese emphasis on having male heirs to carry on the family line and provide for the parents in their old age, there are many, many parents hopeful for a wee little one (and yes, I mean in both ways). However, imagine the woman’s joy/dismay if she goes for an ultrasound and finds out that she will have a boy. “Oh, ecstasy, how wonderful, I can give my husband the son I know he secretly longs for, and our parents grandson they have been pestering us for for years now. But, shit, this means I’m going to be ugly. Damn.”

Well, if the folklore rings true, than Hsiao-Chiu is definitely going to be painting the nursery pink. (Ok, so it’s a bit sexist to assume a girl should get a pink room, so sue me.)

Ok, so I’m at this dinner party, and I know some of the other people who have been invited, specifically “Spudhead”, who I won’t name because of the nature of my disclosure. There are also many guests whom I don’t know: mostly colleagues of Hsiao-Chiu’s husband, who is a Professor at one of the local Universities. They get into a heated discussion about local politics, which I can’t really follow, then another heavy-handed discussion about racism in America. “Spudhead” sits fairly silently at the table while his girlfriend throws herself deeper and deeper into the conversation.

At one point, I have to go to the bathroom really, really badly. I had been sitting at the table drinking glass after glass of water and tea. It’s an annoying habit of mine. Whenever I’m sitting and talking at a table, I will literally drink and eat anything that is placed in front of me: I cease to register the fact that food is actually passing through my mouth. The end result is that I eat too much and drink too much. And Hsiao-Chiu and her husband were being such good hosts that my glasses were constantly being filled and re-filled.

I head to the bathroom, which is at the end of a long, narrow hallway, and it’s occupied. Normally, I would go back to the table and wait until the occupant emerges, but in this case, I was so close to having an accident that I squeezed my thighs together real tight, crossed my legs at the ankles, and leaned against the hallway wall in hopes that my voluntary contractions would be stronger than my involuntary ones. I’m taking shallow gasps of air, when I hear loud gagging sounds coming out of the bathroom. It stops for a second, and then starts up again: the noise is unmistakable – whoever was in the bathroom was seriously revisiting dinner.

When the bathroom door finally opens, “Spudhead” walks out – which I wasn’t expecting. His hairline is damp, and stray strands of hair matted to the sides of his cheeks. We share a glance, but I’m too desperate for the toilet to let the glance contain anything meaningful. By the time I return to the table, “Spudhead” is chatting amicably to his girlfriend and the guy sitting next to them. I decide not to say anything – I didn’t want to accuse my friends of having served something tainted or rancid, and “Spudhead” seemed ok with it.

Event forgotten.

Until I ran into “Spudhead” again at the Haagen-Dazs on the corner of Tun Hua and Chung Hsiao.

I was with Julia this time, and ran into “Spudhead” and his girlfriend at the desserterie. We were there first, and invited them to join us. “Spudhead” sat next to me at the table for four and his girlfriend sat next to Julia. “Spudhead” ordered a fairly impressive sundae, with all the trimmings, while his girlfriend ordered a much more subdued cone, two scoops. Of course, you can’t ever put three girls and one guy at a table together, because the conversation naturally veers away from anything that the guy might be interested in. And that night, we were mucho interested in the new shopping center that had just opened. While we were yapping, “Spudhead” excused himself and slipped away for a moment.

When he returned, I noticed that he was flushed, and his forehead lightly glossy with sweat. And I sensed the distinct eau de vomit on his person. Again.

So what’s up with that!?!

I don’t know how (or if I should) bring this up with his girlfriend. [next entry]

2001-11-04T21:52:00.000-08:00

The Yankees lost!!!! Boo hoo... sob... sob... waaaaaaahhhh!

I'm crushed.

2001-10-29T23:16:00.000-08:00

Had a mixed weekend that alternated between between being sublime and being somewhere in the second circle of hell. Saturday was wonderful: had a late brunch with both of my roommates, a rare phenomenon these days, and then we all raided our closets and cupboards for any odd remnants or items that could be loosely constructed into Halloween costumes. Mandy’s new boyfriend, Chris, had invited all of us to a costume party out in MuCha, and he was pressuring us to get into the holiday spirit. He was being quite heavy handed about it too, threatening to spread wicked rumours about us if we did not do things his way.

Mandy went feline, dressed in sleek black leggings and long sleeve leotard, accessorized with a head band with two cardboard ears hastily attached and a stuffed black stocking pinned to her derriere.

Julia dressed as Miss Lara Croft from Tomb Raider, which was absolute simplicity: a white tank top, a padded bra stuffed with every handkerchief and scarf we could find, short shorts and combat boots – things that are all staples of Julia’s wardrobe. The only difficulty we had was finding someway to simulate Lara’s luscious locks – since Julia’s short hair doesn’t really lend itself to being pulled back into a long, thick braid. We finally bought enough yarn to turn into a braid, which we attached to an elastic band – a makeshift “wig”.

I, showing a complete lack of imagination that puts my creative training to shame, wore a colorful cape, pulled on a sparkling sequin and feather mask I had saved from a masquerade party years ago and went as a bird of paradise.

The party was fun: mostly foreigners with a smattering of Chinese girlfriends. My roommates and I were definitely the outliers, being ethnically Chinese but chatting in our easy, breezy English. The other costumes ranged from the trite (there were 2 guys with Scream masks) to the repulsive (a guy actually dressed up as a… turd. Yes - shit, kaka, poop). The best costume was a guy who was dressed as a Panda, complete with a large, papier-mâché head. I asked him where he got his costume, but he remained quiet (he was quite convincing as a Panda in his silence).

Everyone was soooo young: I am fairly confident that I was the oldest one at the party. It made me want to retreat home, get into bed and stick my head under the pillow. But despite my agedness, I did get a bit heady when The Monster Mash was blasted on the stereo and I grabbed Julia for a spin on the tile “dance floor”. It’s not Halloween until you’ve danced to The Monster Mash.

***

Mandy spent most of the party huddled in a corner with Chris. I haven’t seen her so intense about a guy since Jeremy, but I’m proud to say that I think she’s handling this new relationship with the kind of total self-possession and sophistication that I’ve come to expect of her. But Chris is definitely a bit of a unique cookie.

Although he’s an English teacher, he’s actually a bit older than the green, just out of college dilettantes that dominate the profession in Taiwan. He’s about 30 (I think), and he’s been through a series of “life experiences”, the latest of which brought him to Taiwan.

After graduating from university in England (he’s an Oxford boy), he went to Laos to work for a NGO around mine education. He spent four years traveling from remote village to remote village with a local translator educating adults and children how to identify mines, avoid mines, and some basic medical and survival tools should they ever accidentally detonate a mine. He has some rather harrowing stories about his time in Laos, descriptions of the sketchy forms of transportation he had to take in order to reach some of the more inaccessible parts of Laos as well as some of the ingenious solutions that the locals had already come up with when dealing with mines. He talked about some of the machines built out of bamboo and twine that could be used to remove mines from arable fields without harming people, as well as, sadly, some of the equipment that were created to help the amputated victims of mine blasts regain some mobility (including a “wheelchair” made for a dog that had lost its two hind legs to a stray mine).

After Laos, he went to Xin Jiang province in China to do some work for an environmental group that was mapping erosion effects due to deforestation. I’m not sure what he did for them exactly, but the work had something to do with satellite photography combined with mathematical geography… or something like that. In the process, he learned Mandarin and Uyghur. The more he learned of the Uyghur people, the more he came to despise the oppressive Chinese government. He heard their stories of hardship and felt an almost atavistic desire to offer them comfort and succor. But finding his own gestures shallow and unfulfilling, he quit his job and came to Taiwan. Chris is unsure of what he truly believes, politically, but he realizes that it all has something to do with China, and so he continues to work on his Mandarin here, while supporting his internal intellectual and political developing with a bit of teaching on the side.

He’s a bit of a morose fellow, tall and gawky and unkempt, and he and Mandy make an unlikely couple, but Mandy’s really terribly sweet on him. Mandy met him at a party when I was on vacation, and they really clicked, though I’m not sure what they talk about. All I know is that Mandy has really done a 180 since meeting him, going from being totally apolitical to being a bit of a news maven. I’m not going to say anything, and will refrain from calling the psychiatrist until she turns into a vegetarian and starts making her own clothing from recycled burlap rice bags. (That’s a joke Mandy.)

***

I woke up Sunday with an agonizing back pain, the source of which I am still unsure. It literally felt like someone has wound a screw, and a large one at that, deep into my back, into that crevice between my shoulders that I just cannot reach. I was in so much pain all day that I could not do anything except sit in our living room couch, my back propped with a pillow, watching repeat after boring repeat of CNN and HBO. I got a bit weepy when my roommates went off to lunch with Elly and Dave from upstairs leaving me behind to suffer in solitude.

And then, to add insult to injury, my roommates bring back the mail, and I find an invite to a BCBG fashion show at the new Breeze center that HAPPENED THE DAY BEFORE. Of course, that was all my own faults, since I haven’t checked our mail box in… oh… a week, but still. I love BCBG, and when I read Ginny’s entry about the show, I got all weepy again.

Bastards!

My back still hurts, but at least not so much that I can call in sick (damn!). This is another fine mess that I’ve gotten myself into. [next entry]

2001-10-19T01:25:00.000-07:00

I turn on the TV and head for CNN automatically. If the TV could be like my web browser, I would have CNN set as my homepage. As it is, I can only hope that my roommates have not changed the channel recently, or risk losing precious seconds of the “continuing coverage”.

So many people in New York say that in lower Manhattan, the only way to orient yourself when leaving the warm and steamy confines of the subway is to look for the glittering duo of the World Trade Center. So when the newspapers report that people in Manhattan walk the streets in a daze, looking lost, it seems so obviously relatable to the loss of these markers, these directional icons.

I usually take the 1/9 south, since it is the line most convenient to the FIT campus. I get out at Canal, where I can find Chinatown, my favorite art supply store and the best 2nd hand clothing stores in town. And no matter how often I take that line, I still find myself completely mystified when I hit street level, leaving behind the dull thunder of the next approaching train. There is always the immediate mist of apprehension: did I get off at the wrong stop? Why does this street look so different? And then as quickly, a heady rush of comprehension when I look up and see the twin towers, so permanent, so immobile, so there. That way is south, I say to myself, and I recover my New York sense of purpose, taking my long New York strides towards my final destination.

When they amputated the city, it was like they amputated my sense of direction as well.

I suddenly find myself standing in the middle of a local intersection, an intersection I should know from all my years in town, and I can’t tell north from south, east from west. It’s like one of those childhood games, where you get blindfolded and spun around and around. The game's over and I’ve taken the blindfold off, but I can’t stop my head from spinning. [next entry]

2001-10-18T23:43:00.000-07:00

Amazing...

A Memo to American Muslims

By M. A. Muqtedar Khan

(Oct. 18, 2001) In the name of Allah, the most Benevolent and the Most Merciful. May this memo find you in the shade of Islam enjoying the mercy, the protection and the grace of Allah. I am writing this memo to you all with the explicit purpose of inviting you to lead the American Muslim community in soul searching, reflection and reassessment.

What happened on Sept. 11 in New York and Washington will forever remain a horrible scar on the history of Islam and humanity. No matter how much we condemn it, and point to the Quran and the Sunnah to argue that Islam forbids the killing of innocent people, the fact remains that the perpetrators of this crime against humanity have indicated that their actions are sanctioned by Islamic values. The fact that even now several Muslim scholars and thousands of Muslims defend the accused is indicative that not all Muslims believe that the attacks are un-Islamic. This is truly sad.

Even if it were true that Israel and the U.S. are enemies of the Muslim world, a response that mercilessly murders thousands of innocent people, including hundreds of Muslims, is absolutely indefensible. If anywhere in your hearts there is any sympathy or understanding with those who committed this act, I invite you to ask yourself this question: Would Muhammad sanction such an act?

While encouraging Muslims to struggle against injustice (Al Quran 4:135), Allah also imposes strict rules of engagement. He says in unequivocal terms that to kill an innocent being is like killing entire humanity (Al Quran 5:32). He also encourages Muslims to forgive Jews and Christians if they have committed injustices against us (Al Quran 2:109, 3:159, 5:85).

Muslims, including American Muslims, have been practicing hypocrisy on a grand scale. They protest against the discriminatory practices of Israel but are silent against the discriminatory practices in Muslim states. In the Persian Gulf one can see how laws and even salaries are based on ethnic origin. This is racism, but we never hear of Muslims protesting against them at international forums.

The Israeli occupation of Palestine is perhaps central to Muslim grievance against the West. While acknowledging that, I must remind you that Israel treats its 1 million Arab citizens with greater respect and dignity than most Arab nations treat their citizens. Today Palestinian refugees can settle in the U.S. and become American citizens, but in spite of all the tall rhetoric of the Arab world and Quranic injunctions (24:22), no Muslim country except Jordan extends this support to them.

While we loudly and consistently condemn Israel for its ill treatment of Palestinians, we are silent when Muslim regimes abuse the rights of Muslims and slaughter thousands of them. Remember Saddam Hussein and his use of chemical weapons against Muslims (Kurds)? Remember the Pakistani army's excesses against Muslims (Bengalis)? Remember the mujahideen of Afghanistan and their mutual slaughter? Have we ever condemned them for their excesses? Have we demanded international intervention or retribution against them? Do you know how the Saudis treat their minority Shiis? Have we protested the violation of their rights? But we all are eager to condemn Israel; not because we care for the rights and lives of the Palestinians; we don't. We condemn Israel because we hate "them."

Muslims love to live in the U.S. but also love to hate it. Many openly claim that the U.S. is a terrorist state but they continue to live in it. Their decision to live here is testimony that they would rather live here than anywhere else. As an Indian Muslim, I know for sure that nowhere on earth, including India, will I get the same sense of dignity and respect that I have received in the U.S. No Muslim country will treat me as well as the U.S. has. If what happened on Sept. 11 had happened in India, the world's biggest democracy, thousands of Muslims would have been slaughtered in riots on mere suspicion and there would be another slaughter after the culprits' identity was confirmed. But in the U.S., bigotry and xenophobia have been kept in check by the media and political leaders. In many places hundreds of Americans have gathered around Islamic centers in symbolic gestures of protection and embrace of American Muslims. In many cities Christian congregations have started wearing hijab to identify with fellow Muslim women. In patience and in tolerance ordinary Americans have demonstrated their extraordinary virtues.

It is time that we acknowledge that the freedoms we enjoy in the U.S. are more desirable to us than superficial solidarity with the Muslim world. If you disagree, then prove it by packing your bags and going to whichever Muslim country you identify with. If you do not leave and do not acknowledge that you would rather live here than anywhere else, know that you are being hypocritical.

It is time that we faced these hypocritical practices and struggled to transcend them. It is time that American Muslim leaders fought to purify their own lot. For over a decade we have watched as Muslims in the name of Islam have committed violence against other Muslims and other peoples. We have always found a way to reconcile the vast distance between Islamic values and Muslim practices by pointing to the injustices committed upon Muslims by others. The point however is this -- our belief in Islam and commitment to Islamic values is not contingent on the moral conduct of the U.S. or Israel. And as Muslims can we condone such inhuman and senseless waste of life in the name of Islam?

The biggest victims of hate-filled politics as embodied in the actions of several Muslim militias all over the world are Muslims themselves. Hate is the extreme form of intolerance and when individuals and groups succumb to it they can do nothing constructive. Militias like the Taliban have allowed their hate for the West to override their obligation to pursue the welfare of their people and as a result of their actions not only have thousands of innocent people died in America, but thousands of people will die in the Muslim world.

Already, half a million Afghans have had to leave their homes and their country. It will only get worse as the war escalates. Hamas and Islamic Jihad may kill a few Jews, women and children included, with their suicide bombs and temporarily satisfy their lust for Jewish blood, but thousands of Palestinians then pay the price for their actions.

The culture of hate and killing is tearing away at the moral fabric of the Muslim society. We are more focused on "the other" and have completely forgotten our duty to Allah. In pursuit of the inferior jihad we have sacrificed the superior jihad.

Islamic resurgence, the cherished ideals of which pursued the ultimate goal of a universally just and moral society, has been hijacked by hate and calls for murder and mayhem. If Osama bin Laden were an individual, then we would have no problem. But unfortunately bin Laden has become a phenomenon -- a cancer eating away at the morality of our youth, and undermining the spiritual health of our future.

Today the century-old Islamic revival is in jeopardy because we have allowed insanity to prevail over our better judgment. Yes, the U.S. has played a hand in the creation of bin Laden and the Taliban, but it is we who have allowed them to grow and gain such a foothold. It is our duty to police our world. It is our responsibility to prevent people from abusing Islam. It is our job to ensure that Islam is not misrepresented. We should have made sure that what happened on Sept. 11 should never have happened.

It is time the leaders of the American Muslim community woke up and realized that there is more to life than competing with the American Jewish lobby for power over U.S. foreign policy. Islam is not about defeating Jews or conquering Jerusalem. It is about mercy, about virtue, about sacrifice and about duty. Above all it is the pursuit of moral perfection. Nothing can be further away from moral perfection than the wanton slaughter of thousands of unsuspecting innocent people.

I hope that we will now rededicate our lives and our institutions to the search for harmony, peace and tolerance. Let us be prepared to suffer injustice rather than commit injustices. After all, it is we who carry the divine burden of Islam and not others. We have to be morally better, more forgiving, more sacrificing than others, if we wish to convince the world about the truth of our message. We cannot simply be equal to others in virtue, we must excel.

It is time for soul searching. How can the message of Muhammad, who was sent as mercy to mankind, become a source of horror and fear? How can Islam inspire thousands of youth to dedicate their lives to killing others? We are supposed to invite people to Islam, not murder them.

The worst exhibition of Islam happened on our turf. We must take first responsibility to undo the evil it has manifest. This is our mandate, our burden and also our opportunity.

2001-10-17T02:05:00.000-07:00

Hell yea, her ass followed. All the way baby.

2001-10-16T01:18:00.000-07:00

Another typhoon headed for Taiwan, which will probably miss us completely – which means no days off, but we’re still left to suffer the indignities of another week shrouded in miserable weather. And since the autumn is the only season in Taiwan with even vaguely reasonable weather, I feel completely cheated.

I want my money back!

Over the weekend, I went to the spa with my one remaining ‘single’ girlfriend, Cecile, a Taiwanese girl that I had met many years ago through work and have remained in sporadic contact with. Cecile actually knows my roommates and a lot of my friends, though we don’t actually seem to ever bump into each other casually. Cecile also commented on the recent deluge of new relationships.

“Ok, Jody. Since we’re like the only women left who don’t have guys, we’re going to have to look out for each other from now on,” Cecile said to me while we were soaking in the whirlpool. “Your goal is to find a guy for me, and my goal is to find a guy for you.”
“But I don’t know anyone.” I protested.
“Well, we can’t just sit around anymore and say that there aren’t any guys in Taiwan, because everyone seems to be proving us wrong.”
“Hey, weren’t you out of the country last month?” I inquired.
“Yea, I was in China, doing some work for my parents.” Cecile works for her parent’s company.
“You know, I was out of town too…. See, it’s not that there are any more guys in Taiwan, it’s just that we left the country and – bam – we missed mating season.”
Cecile started laughing, so hard that she swallowed a mouthful of water and had to sputter out her next words.
“Yea, that’s right. We just missed mating season.”

So this is the scoop on my two traitorous roommates and their new hommes du jour (excuse me while I massacre the French language).

***

Julia is actually dating… a doctor!!! Her doctor, in fact, the one that had set her leg when she had that accident two months (or so) ago. Apparently, in her subsequent visits to see him, she had become more and more enchanted by his easy warmth and affability and she actually broke all protocol by asking him out (after finding out that he was single)!

Julia is no longer talking about moving back to the US, her plans temporarily forgotten in the euphoria of her new infatuation.

The doctor’s name is Alan, but Mandy and I like to refer to him (when he isn’t around) as The Doc. As in, “when’s The Doc going to come over and hang with us”, or “how’s The Doc in bed?” Which elicits belly aching giggles from the two of us, and a sour Julia growling at us from the living room couch. Luckily, though crutch-less, Julia still has a small cast on, which prevents her from chasing us down and pounding us, which she is completely capable of doing.

On their first date, Julia and Alan went to see Rush Hour II at Warner Village since they are both enthusiastic Jackie Chan fans. For Julia, it was strange to see Alan outside the context of the hospital where they had first met, but when he started to act all clumsy: brusquely paying for the movie tickets and then rushing absurdly to the candy line to buy popcorn and sodas, Julia realized that he was every bit as nervous as she was.

The hardest thing about dating a local man is figuring out which “relationship camp” they belong to. Some of the more traditional men in Taiwan believe that a one-on-one date basically signals a monogamous commitment, and the act of holding hands is akin to a promise of marriage. Others, particularly those who have spend time abroad and those who are younger, are more like their Western counterparts and play each relationship as it comes up.

Although Alan was born and grew up in Taiwan, he went to med school in the US, in New York, in fact, at the Cornell Medical School. It didn’t take long for Julia to confirm (to her relief) that he was a subscriber to the latter relationship camp. The movie was hilarious, and Alan and Julia were acting sufficiently childish – hooting at the screen when ever Zhang Zi Yi appeared, whispering during critical scenes, throwing popcorn at each other – that they were reprimanded several times by the scowling matron sitting behind them.

Afterwards, Alan brought her to a neighborhood bar near the hospital. Julia ordered a gin and tonic.

Over drinks, they bonded over music, work and psycho parents. Alan was as eclectically interested in music as Julia and he boasted about a CD collection several thousand large (and meticulously catalogued). To most anyone else, this kind of obsessive behaviour and rampant consumerism may have been off-putting, but to Julia, who had to leave most of her own extensive music collection behind in the US, it was a heaven-sent signal of their compatibility.

Alan was a perfect gentleman at the end of the first date, and there was not even the slightest pause of embarrassment when he bent down and gave Julia a light kiss on the cheeks. And in an unusual departure from male behaviour, he actually called her the next day, at home. Julia was at work at the time and Mandy took the message. Much to Julia’s chagrin, she was accosted at home that night with Mandy, grinning ear to ear, chanting Alan’s name the moment she stepped in the door.

***

And in a remarkable turn of events, the guy that Mandy has taken a fancy to is an English teacher and… significantly younger than she is. Mandy must have freed her mind. But more on that the next time I write…

***

They switched all the Diet Coke in this country to Coke Light. Bastards! What am I going to do? Can I really give up the great taste of Diet Coke?? Why do the gods torment me so mercilessly?[next entry]

2001-10-11T21:01:00.000-07:00

Rob and I have been exchanging email for the past few days as if the five-year silence had never happened. He told me that he had gone to a jazz concert this past weekend and was going to go hear Rachmanianoff being performed this Sunday. I haven’t been to any sort of classical concert for the longest time, and reading his descriptions of the music performances made me deeply nostalgic for opera at Lincoln Center.

When I was a student at FIT, there were special discounts available that allowed me to go see opera at Lincoln Center for some ridiculously subsidized price of like $12 a performance. Obviously, these were for stratospheric seats, but having never been seated lower than the upper tiers, I suppose I don’t know what I’m missing. In those years, I saw as many performances as I could: La Boheme, La Traviata, Die Zauberflote, Wagner’s Der Ring des Nibelungen, Madame Butterfly, Tosca. As a designer, I went for the spectacle as much as for the music: there’s nothing like being 20, decked out in the nicest dress you can buy for under $100 and walking into the square in front of the center before being caught in the surge of impeccably dressed men and women flowing towards the ethereally beautiful performance halls.

I’m not sure what to make of the entire Rob thing. I’ll continue to email him, and I suppose that at some point I will have to see him (not that I have to see him).

***

Have you ever had moments in your life where you think you must have hit fast forward instead of the pause button because you take a look around and you no longer recognize the landscape? That’s a bit like how I feel right now. When I left Taiwan for vacation, the world was a recognizable and coherent place. When I came back, it was as if I had stepped directly into the Twilight Zone.

Suddenly all the single girls I had been spending all my time with are no longer so single. Both Julia and Mandy have taken up with new guys, Cynthia is so shacked up with a guy that she couldn’t even go shopping with me this past weekend, and even the girls I know from the office and the gym are suddenly all giggly over men that the have met recently. What’s wrong with this picture??

I feel like the girl that missed the best party of the year.

Heck, forget about missing the party; I wasn’t even invited.

***

But even coupling up did not prevent Julia and Mandy from joining me in front of the television on Tuesday for Sex and the City. It was the season finale (unfortunately), with guest appearances from all the significant ex-boyfriends – Big, Aidan, Steve, and Trey. And the season ended the same way that summers end for all single girls: with a note of the bittersweet. In Taiwan, the weather is actually starting to cool off, and though the days continue to be short shirt weather, the nip in the evening air reminds us of the wet winter just ahead. And all the promises that the summer started out with: summer fling, summer fun, summer love – whether fulfilled or not – are still warm but waning. The way the feeling of a pair of lips pressing on your skin lingers long after a warm embrace. [next entry]

2001-10-08T03:17:00.000-07:00

I have decided (drum roll please) to try to attempt that novel that many of my friends and not a few of my readers have been cajoling me into. How did I come to make this pivotal and altogether knee-knocking decision? I discovered that a college friend of mine was published this past year. I even went on-line and ordered her book from Amazon.com.

And in the great tradition of being a starving artist, there are rumours being bandied about that my company will be laying off some employees later this month. Will I become a statistics? Somehow, it seems karmically unfair that I might get a promotion and laid off within a six-month period. But that is the vogue in Taiwan at the moment.

Did the news of the one precipitate the news of the other? Or vice versa? This is a mystery I am afraid we will never solve.

2001-10-05T01:26:00.000-07:00

When I returned to Taiwan, I received a phone call from Jonathan L., a friend of a friend of a friend who is living in the apartment that Mandy and I vacated so many years ago. Apparently, someone named Rob had written me a postcard posted to that address. This is the nice thing about Taipei: it is such a small town in some ways that strange things like this can and do happen.

So I swung by the old apartment this past weekend to pick up the postcard from the mysterious Rob. Rob turned out to be Robert Ng, a guy that I had a brief thing with back when I first arrived in Taiwan. Right after our brief thing, he took off to Australia (yes, I do drive the men away – far, far away). I haven’t heard from him since and now this slightly mysterious postcard.

The postcard was written in and posted from Hong Kong, and Rob wrote to say that he would be living in Hong Kong for at least a year. The postcard also included a contact number.

I was sufficiently intrigued to call the number, though under many, many normal circumstances, I would have thrown the postcard away, assuming it to be some poor man’s version of the “booty call”, which I have no time for. But the postcard had a pensive and wistful tone to it, and I am easily seduced by pensive, wistful men.

Rob was (is) an introverted incurable romantic. That’s what I remember of him. He was flabbergasted to receive my phone call and admitted that he had written the postcard on the off chance that I was still at that old address. He was certain that I had moved on to greener pastures but wanted the satisfaction of knowing that he had pursued every possible avenue open to him to try to relocate me. Apparently, he had gone so far as to do a white pages search in the US on the net and even tried alumni services at my alma mater. Of course, he could have saved himself a ton of effort by doing a google search, which would have turned up my blog. (A recent phenomenon, I’m proud to say.) His efforts evoked mixed feelings within me: on the one hand, I have never before had a man take such drastic interest in finding me, and yet, I was vaguely ashamed of how easy I had been to find.

We exchanged home phone numbers, email addresses and promises to catch up in person soon.

The very next day I received a length email from Rob:

Jody,

It was so good and so surprising to hear your voice this morning across a crystal clear line. I had largely lost way as to what to do next to find you. I had an address and phone number in New York, but I tried the number and, obviously, it was disconnected. The postcard I had sent to Taiwan would surely be “returned to sender”.

It’s been almost six years since we have seen each other. It’s quite bizarre, but I happened upon a letter from you whilst sorting through my papers upon arrival in Hong Kong. It spurred this mad dash to locate you. How wonderful to have found you. Where to start?

I spent two years in Australia followed by four years in Papua New Guinea. The years in PNG were an anthropologist’s dream. They were pivotal to my development, and I learned so many lessons and had so many life experiences in such a short time. I visited remote and isolated places, learned ancient tongues, and enjoyed the enormously generous natures of the Polynesian natives.

I was living in a society that had only been in a “society” for half a century. PNG’s internal highland regions were first “explored” in the 1930s. Before that, no one even knew that the 3.5 million New Guinea highlanders even existed. It is an amazing country but I won’t bore you with my passionate tales of hill walks, crystal streams, deserted paradise islands, derring doo and danger.

In comparison, Hong Kong is treating me really well. I am enjoying living in a big exciting bright lights city. What amazes me is that if you travel a relatively short distance of 20-30 minutes outside of HKG, you can find yourself in beautiful secluded hills with reservoirs and rivers to play in. Hill walking is a favorite pastime. And there are stunning walks. And then there are the new territories: the “country-side” with remote villages, unspoiled beaches, hillsides, and valleys, only a short bus ride away!

I have been to a few of these places with friends: you might call them “exploratory forays”. I’m doing quite a bit of walking to get fit again after an unfortunate injury I got playing soccer last year, but I’m afraid it’s going to take a lot more than a few weekend jaunts into the hills.

I am working in an entirely new industry in Hong Kong [shipping –ed.]; quite different than anything I’ve done before. Of course, it’s wonderful to feel like I still have an open horizon in front of me, and it keeps me from ever feeling trapped. However, I’m starting to feel the drawbacks of my nomadic existence: friendships come and go, and one can never set “roots” properly. The energy required to re-establish oneself again and again seems increasingly arduous.

Anyways, I’m living in Kowloon on ------- Road, with a reasonably good view of Hong Kong Harbour. You must come and visit. The apartment is big by Hong Kong standards and quite new, but faulted with the usual problems plaguing Hong Kong apartments – no cupboard space, no space in the bedroom for anything but the bed, etc… It’s more than adequate and I shouldn’t complain.

I live by myself, which is novel for me, having lived with roommates for so many years prior. But I have gotten to know my neighbors and have a nice group of acquaintances/friends already. With my friends, I have been seeing quite a lot of Hong Kong, as I mentioned before, and getting involved in the vibrant night scene in Hong Kong. I’ve been taking Salsa lessons and doing a bit of Yoga. Yes, can you imagine me doing Yoga? I get to concerts occasionally, preferably jazz or classical, and try to avoid the bar scene though it’s often inevitable.

I’m sure that this is enough for now, Jody. I have lots more to tell but don’t want to scare you off with more of my boring chatter. I often remember our time in Taiwan with fondness, and I have so often wondered since what you have been up to. I can’t think of a single unforgivable reason for me not having stayed in contact with you through these years. I hope the years have been kind to you, Jody, and have filled your life with heart stoppingly wonderful experiences. Do tell me of them, and of you.

I am so looking forward to catching up with you.

Fondest regards,
Rob

Whew! Just cutting and pasting that email here made me weary. So I wrote Rob a terse email in reply, and directed him to this website: there seemed no reason to abbreviate my life into a singular email when I could give him pages and pages of inane ramblings.

Rob suggested coming to Taiwan to visit me at some point. I’m not sure how I feel about this. I am not one of those women who shirks at continuing relationships with exes. But there are some exes better left buried. Is this one of them? Apparently, having already shared the address of this website with Rob, I am also a woman without shame (flaming red cheeks). Maybe he can find humour in my bravado.

***

Interesting discussion going on at Oriented about why there seems to be a certain faction of Asian women who are exclusively drawn to Foreign, white men. Most of the replies are completely moronic, including some downright disgusting generalizations.

The only explanation that seems to have any logic behind it is the idea that in general, Western ideals and therefore Western men tend to be more tolerant of independent, freethinking women. Quite different from the supposed “Asian” traditions of treating women as subservient, second-class citizens. Of course, this argument is riddled with holes.

First, if it’s simply a desire to live under the traditions of Western tolerance, I can think of many a Western raised Asian men who are as enlightened as their white brethren. Furthermore, if these women are so independent and freethinking, why is it that they need a man at all? Second, at least in Taiwan, there is a much longer tradition of treating women as equals than in the States. Of course, there are men and families in Taiwan that cannot tolerate the educated career woman, but you can find these in the US as well (the redneck myth is alive and well). The National Taiwan University accepted women at least as far back as the 1950s, compared to Harvard in the US, which did not admit women until the 1960s. Women have been an integral part of the Taiwan workforce for centuries, and not in the tea-girl capacity seen in Japan. Many women continue to work even after having children, and I never hear of women being denied positions or jobs in Taiwan because they were married and in their childbearing years, a “weeding” tool used often in corporate America.

So rather than going with the sweeping condemnation of Asian society, this is the best that I personally can come up with.

(1) Asian men (including many foreign born/raised Asian men) have a terrible time with flattery and flirting. Call it a side effect of a lifetime of exposure to CDS (Complete Disclosure Syndrome, see previous post). I have yet to meet a local Chinese man who can whisper all those sweet nothings in the manner of Joe Expat. And let’s face it, there is nothing more seductive to a woman than a man who (at least in words) thinks she is the sun, moon and stars.

(2) It may not be humility, but I don’t have a better word for it: although Asians love their Gucci’s and their BMWs and show their status symbols in abundance, they don’t talk about their achievements the way that their white counterparts do. Listening to some of the foreigners talking about their experiences and exploits at the local bars and you could almost believe that they are Indiana Jones, Bill Gates, Brad Pitt, and Mahatma Gandhi all rolled into one. I call it the Swagger and BSD (Big Swinging Dick) Syndrome. Who can resist that?

(3) Height. Ok, I hate to say it and I’m so shallow, but the average white man is still taller than the average Asian man.

(4) And finally, HELLO?!?, we’re in Taiwan. White men are just so damn exotic. [next entry]

2001-10-04T00:54:00.000-07:00

I haven’t written for a long, long, long time. To my steadfast readers, I apologize. The truth is, my inner life has gone to pieces since September 11th. Although I’ve resumed “my life” to the best of my ability and urged on by the sincere words of my mayor, Giuliani, there seems such fraud in such normalcy.

To ease my way back into writing in my blog, I’m going to insert a passage I had written back in September, when I was visiting my parents in New York.

Enjoy!

It’s Labor Day and a beautiful one in New York. It’s perfect beach weather but I am unfortunately, not at the beach. I am, instead, hanging around my parent’s house, helping my mother plant some odd bushes and plants that she and I combed a 50-mile radius for, yesterday. Meanwhile, my father is in the garage, muttering over the broken lawn mower and wondering if he would get stuck in traffic if he went to the Home Depot. Yes, this is the way that my “vacations” at home always end up being. One would think that my parents would be breathless from the opportunity to have their long-lost child at home, but no, they’re far too busy milking me for guilt-driven concessions. In the two and a half days that I have been home, I have already: cleaned up my room (for some reason, despite the fact that I have not actually resided in my room for over a decade, the room still needs to be cleaned every single time I return. Is there such a thing as a poltergeist that specifically targets the absentee, not-quite-yet-an-adult child?), gone grocery shopping twice, visited a cousin twice removed, visited all the nurseries within a 50 mile radius (see above) and planted odd bushes and plants (see above).

I think that it is the psychotic behavior of our parents that unites Asians. The origin of every close friendship/relationship I have had with an Asian American can be traced to the pivotal discussion of: “are your parents more psycho than mine?”

I am not being completely fair, as usual. I know that my parents mean well, but here is a prime example of their (my mother, specifically) psycho behavior. When I arrived home, my mother was hovering around my room watching me unpack. This was after she had tried to tempt me with various culinary delights, most of which revolved around eggs, which I was not really in the mood for after a miserable 18-hour commute. When I pulled out my Betsy Johnson dress, she eyed it skeptically and said, “that dress, what it for?”
“It’s for cousin Stella’s wedding.”
“Really?” She moves into the room to rub the fabric between her fingers, “this material, it not very good.”
“Mom, it’s silk.”
My mother looks shocked, “This is silk??! Ay yah, I don’t believe it! How can silk feel so cheap?! You try it on, let me see.”

Since I only ever have one goal when visiting my parents (i.e. avoid confrontation), I sigh wearily and march to the bathroom to pull on the dress.

When I come out, my mother continues to gaze at the dress skeptically. “I see. The dress designed very nicely.”
“Yes, Mom, it’s by Betsy Johnson.”
“Who she? She some big-shot designer?”
“Yes, Mom.”
“How much you pay for dress?”
“About x amount NT dollars. It was 50% off.” (I had subtracted a few thousand off the actual cost. It’s a habit of mine to do this whenever my mother asks about the cost of something I bought.)
“Ay yah… too expensive. You kids. You don’t know the value of money. Why you spend so much money on such a pretty dress anyways? You don’t have the pretty face to go with it.”
I had no retort for that.

No, I did not rage at my mother, nor did I rip the dress off in frustration (that dress represents a nice chunk of my raise after-all). We all know that timeless saying: “a face that only a mother can love.” Well, apparently, my own mother cannot love my face. Does that make me simply unlovable on a broader sense?

Most of the Chinese people I deal with in Taiwan share a unique, universally Chinese behaviour of “complete disclosure”. This is especially prevalent among the Chinese who don’t deal with Westerners a whole lot, people who were born and raised on Chinese soil. This behaviour runs the gamut from unabashed questions about your salary, the cost of your home, and the price you paid for the socks you wore on Tuesday, to unreserved (and often, exaggerated) comments about your hair, your nose or the second button on your navy office uniform. In short, it’s very very hard to get a Chinese person to keep his opinion to himself.

Once, about a year ago, I was in a not so serious bike accident. I had some scrapes, the most prominent one being a large gash on my forehead. I had to get three stitches on that. For the next several months, everyone, from my co-workers, to my landlord, to my local grocers and cashiers, to the lady whom I had never met before standing on line in front of me at a lunchbox place, would point to the wound and say something to the effect of: “oh, that cut makes you look very ugly. I know a medicine man/ doctor/ psychic/ carpenter that can take care of that for you.” (Carpenter? Maybe I misheard her Chinese.)

Sigh.

The thing is, I know that my mother did not mean what she said in quite the way it came out. She is simply one of those people cursed with Complete Disclosure Syndrome (CDS). Intellectually, both she and I know for a fact that I’m hardly the kind of monster that sends children screaming and running away in fright when they see me coming down the road. However, it is certainly one more event for me to file away in my ever-growing “psycho parents” folder.

As I grow older, I find myself increasingly waiting in trepidation for the moment when I become my parents. After spending a (albeit brief) lifetime ranting against my parents, I have just recently begun to observe that the people who most vehemently denounce the behaviour of their parents are the ones most likely to exhibit the very same neuroses as their parents. Call it divine retribution. Godly interference so that he who whines loudest is also he who whines without effect. So I place myself among the condemned.

Ok, so psycho parent stories are about as unique as the plot lines of the latest reality TV shows. But I sincerely believe that every ethnic/racial/national group has its own strategic means of torturing its progeny. Which only serves to remind me of the Philip Larkin poem:

‘They fuck you up, your Mum and Dad.
They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
And add some extra, just for you.’
[next entry]

2001-09-16T08:25:00.000-07:00

For those of you that I have not contacted directly, I am now safe and sound back in New York. I spent almost 2 days in various airports in Europe trying to get back home (the rest of my family is still in Europe - hopefully flights will be normalized by the end of the week, when they are scheduled to return). I am already 4 days overdue on my return to Taiwan, and it looks like I will be in New York for another few days before United can get me back to Taiwan.

I can't bear to go downtown and look upon the new skyline of my city, the city.

2001-09-12T20:06:00.000-07:00

I was able to find some fellow Americans in a bar tonight and we had what I guess could be lightly termed a "tragedy party". There were at least three other New Yorkers there. One of them, a young, blond girl who is just a few years out of college, thinks she may have lost two close friends who worked in the WTC.

This is her story:
"I have only been able to reach my friends through email and the internet and we have all been checking in, one by one.

Then, I got a message this morning from one friend - she had gotten a call from our friend who worked in the South tower. The second plane had struck his tower, and he was in a floor above. He said he knew that he was about to die and he was trying to call as many of his loved ones as he could.

No one has heard from him since. We're still praying for a miracle."

My heart aches so overwhelmingly.

2001-09-11T18:50:00.000-07:00

I'm still on vacation, in Europe. I walked into a cafe to grab a cup of tea, and saw the news. When it finally sank in what had happened, I burst into tears - I think I scared the other customers.... I'm not in New York, and won't be able to get back for a few days (I was scheduled to return tomorrow). My thoughts are with my fellow Americans and New Yorkers.

2001-08-29T10:58:00.000-07:00

Hmmm... I haven't posted anything in a while. (Shame on me.) I've been busy at work: had a huge presentation to give yesterday and a then handed in a couple of reports today. But now, I'm FREE!!! I'm headed back to the US tomorrow (oops, it's 2am now, I mean today), noon flight on United with a brief stop at SFO. I have been busy for the last hour throwing crap into my suitcase. Maybe I'll bring my computer and write on the plane. Or maybe I won't....

2001-08-16T03:01:00.000-07:00

Since yesterday was payday, I reaped the benefits of my raise for the very first time. Cynthia and I met up at the Far Eastern Hotel “Mall” after work for a shopping slash spa slash dinner extravaganza. I felt wickedly female for my super-indulgent afternoon. But here’s my rationalization: the NT dollar has lost so much value in the past year that my raise only just covers the devaluation. Which means in US dollar terms, I haven’t gotten a raise at all. Which would mean that if I saved my money to be ultimately converted to US dollars if and when I go back to the States, I would have to realize all of the devaluation. BUT, if I spend the money now, the Tai Bistill has roughly the same purchasing power as it did a year ago, which means that the devaluation has much less an impact on my income….

See? Look at all the twists and convolutions that a girl will go through to justify shopping. It’s like Carrie says, “but I really need eight thousand dollars worth of shoes.”

We went to Nine West first, but it was like a tornado had swept through the place. Apparently, Nine West started their end of season sale last week, with heavy discounts, and all the bloodhound noses of the thrifty Taiwanese women had turned in this direction at the same time. Talk about shoes to the carnage. There was barely anything left and the few styles that were worth perusing were not available in the right sizes (most Chinese women seem to coagulate in the 6 to 8 size range). Discouraged but not dissuaded, we went through the designer boutiques in the department store.

In my opinion, the Far Eastern Hotel is one of the most attractive buildings in Taiwan. When I arrived in Taiwan in 1996, five years had passed since my last trip to Taiwan for the Jian Tan/ Loveboat program. I was expecting the same, second world country that I had come to have a love-hate relationship with: hot summers, dirty streets, dilapidated buildings. The only person I knew in Taiwan was Joey, a guy I had met at Jian Tan who had moved to Taiwan right after graduation and was working for the Swire group in Taiwan.

The day after I arrived in Taiwan, Joey took me on a tour of Taipei on the back of his scooter. We zoomed into the breezy night, helmet-less (*cringe*) and I was spun in so many dizzying directions that I had to struggle to keep my dinner in my stomach. Despite the slight nausea, I felt exhilaratingly trapped in the urban maze of Taipei. Then Joey pointed up. We must have been heading north at the time, after turning onto Tun Hua from Ho Ping East Road. I saw the twin towers of the Far Eastern above the palm and rubber trees lining the avenue, mysterious black glass subtly lit from within, stretching skyward, exploding in twin rings of twinkling lights. I thought I had been transported to some alternate universe, where the city of Taipei was actually modern and cosmopolitan and beautiful. This was my Blade Runner moment.

But last night, the Far Eastern was more like a ghost town than a shopping mecca. The few people in the Mall were there for the food court in the basement and not for the stores. Cynthia and I stopped in the MaxMara store, the Anna Sui store, the Plein Sud store, each more cavernous than the last, and us the sole explorers, our footsteps echoing resoundedly through the tile and pewter. There were markdowns everywhere, 40%, 50%, 60% off signs piled on top of discreet “discount” signs. But no takers. This is not a good sign for the economy. I guess I had always assumed that even in the direst of situations, there would still be women in Taiwan jostling for the newest Gucci bags, and Chanel shoes.

I did manage to salvage some delight out of the chills from the signs of the collapsing economy. I bought a wonderful Betsy Johnson dress, clingy silk chiffon lined with satin with the most beautiful and delicate floral print imaginable. And at 50% off, it was almost a bargain. It’ll be perfect for my cousin’s wedding later this summer.

Cynthia and I had appointments for aromatherapy facials at Aveda after our shopping trip. Enough said. There’s nothing in the world better than an aromatherapy facial at Aveda after a stressful day at work.

Cynthia is a totally crazy woman. She is Malay-Chinese, grew up in Malaysia, then got her business degree in the US. After finishing graduate school, she decided to run away from her parents by moving to Taipei rather than going back to Kuala Lumpur, where her father is still, apparently, waiting for her to come home and be the accountant for the family business. “He no need to hold his breath,” Cynthia says.

I don’t remember where I first met Cynthia, but I know what it was about her that drew my roommates and me to her. She talks like a rapid-fire semi-automatic weapon. And as far as Cynthia’s concerned, it doesn’t matter that her English grammar is absolutely garbage and that when she throws in Malay phrases no one can understand her – she has a lot of things to say, goddamit, and altogether too little time left in the span of her life to say it all. Surprisingly, Cynthia’s Chinese is nearly flawless, and she manages to have these adorable repartees with Chinese men that alternately bemuses and befuddles them.

Over dinner, our faces still tingly from the herbal tightening, Cynthia started talking about a guy she had been seeing recently.

[Translated from Chinese, to the best of my ability.]

C: “I really didn’t think I was going to sleep with this guy at all.”
J: “Wait. You slept with him?”
C: “Yea, but be quiet, I have to tell you the whole story.”
J: [nods]
C: “So on our first date, he takes me to this really expensive Chinese restaurant, up near where Kiss Disco is. I mean it’s one of those places where the ceiling is three stories tall and the room is always cold no matter how many people are eating there.”
J: [nods]
C: “And I’m really not into the food and the guy’s only ok.” [starts counting on her fingers] “He’s pretty good looking, he’s from a decent family, he has a good job, he’s Chinese.”
J: “Of course he is… you only date Chinese guys.”
C: “Shush. That’s not the point. The point is that being Chinese is obviously one of my prerequisites for a guy I can marry. Anyways. The date is fine. He has some good stories, but he’s maybe a little on the boring side. By the end of the dinner, I know that I’m not going to go out with him again. So then he takes me home in his new Benz.”
J: “Ugh.”
C: “And on the way home, my stomach starts to hurt really, really badly. Can you believe it? Food poisoning! At that high class restaurant!! And I have to tell him to pull over to the side of the street so that I can throw up. You should have seen how quickly he pulled over!!”
J: “Yeah, so you don’t throw up in his precious car.”
C: “And he has to do this 2 more times before he reaches my house. So I think this guy is never going to call me again. Who would? It’s too horrifying, too disgusting.”
J: “But he calls again…”
C: “Yeah! The next day. And I think I was so completely surprised that he would want to go on another date with me after seeing me throw up that I forgot that I didn’t want to go out with him.”
J: “So?”
C: “So we go on three more dates. Each one more boring than the next. He tells the worst jokes and has the worst laugh I have ever heard. [imitates what sounds like a donkey braying] But I’m still enduring it because I want to believe that someone who can look beyond the sight of me puking out the door of his car must have some good qualities. And finally, this weekend, I sleep with him just to get him to shut up with his dumb jokes and his stories about his stupid job.”
J: [giggling uncontrollably]
C: [hits J on the shoulder]
J: “Tell me… Tell me…”
C: “Since he lives with his brother and sister we obviously can’t go to his place, so we go to my place instead. So the chi is already bad. And we make out in my room, which is not bad, I’ve already kissed him before… he’s not a bad kisser, not like those guys that has floppy lips that just slides like a piece of raw meat all over your face.”
J: [makes a disgusted face]
C: [rolls her eyes] “He’s obviously totally excited at this point, because he’s wearing this really tight pair of jeans and I don’t even know why, since he doesn’t have much to show. He’s lying on the bed, with this lewd look in his eyes and I really want to slap him… really. Except I think he would enjoy it.”
J: [sarcastically] “Yeah, and you would too.”
C: [hits J on the shoulder again] “He gets undressed, then doesn’t help me get undressed. Doesn’t even unbutton my shirt. And I think, ‘this is such a bad sign.’ His dick is this big…” [she makes a gesture with her thumb and pointer finger] “…and I swear to God he comes before he’s even penetrated me.”
J: [bursts out laughing]
C: [looking wounded] “It’s so not funny. I can’t believe the shit I put up with and I can’t even get a decent fuck out of it. And the worst thing is, he rolls over on his back with this big satisfied grin and says, ‘That was incredible, you’re just too sexy.’ So now I think it’s all my own fault that I can’t get a decent fuck.”
J: [tears rolling out of eyes]
C: "Men like that should come with a warning label… you know, like cigarettes… ‘The Surgeon General warns that this Man may have problems with premature ejaculation and could do serious damage to your mental health’.”

***

Julia’s recovering well from her brush with death. She up and about with a vengeance, she’s even taken care of her completely unsalvageable scooter. Her face is a bit swollen from scraping the pavement and the gash in her arm has opened once despite the stitches. Otherwise, she’s mostly pissed that (1) the accident ruined one of her favorite pairs of pants and now she has to ruin some more pants to accommodate the cast and (2) she won’t be able to play Frisbee for a while.

The women I know…. *sigh* [next entry]

2001-08-15T01:31:00.000-07:00

I was sitting in the living room Monday night with Mandy and we were watching crap TV when my cell phone rang. It was Julia and she was hysterical.

“Hi… Jody?” Her voice was choked with sobs.
“Julia! What’s wrong?”
“Ow… ow, ow, ow… I’m in an ambulance on the way to the hospital.”
“Oh my God, are you ok?”
Mandy was staring at me and she was mouthing frantically, “what happened? What happened?”
“I think so, ow… I had an accident. I think I broke my leg.” Julia started sobbing again.
“Where are they taking you?”
“Um… The Ren Ai Hospital.”
“We’ll be right there.”

Mandy and I rushed to the hospital as fast as we could and after some prodding at the registration desk, we finally found Julia in the waiting room, lying on a cot. The right side of her face had a few scratches and her right arm was wrapped with heavy gauze. Blood was seeping through the bandages. A thin blanket covered her legs.

When she saw us, Julia burst into fresh tears.

“Oh, honey,” Mandy rushed to Julia’s side and gingerly gave her reclined body a light hug, “you look all banged up.”
“It happened so fast,” Julia bawled. “The driver was so mean. And my leg hurts so much.”
I peeked under the blanket at her legs – her left leg looked untouched, but the pant leg of her right leg had been split open and her entire leg was encased in a rather bulky looking splint.
“I’m sure you’ll be fine, Jules,” I said in my best comfort voice, not at all sure since my medical knowledge borders on imbecilic.

Julia had been on her scooter on her way home from work. She was driving down an alley and was about to make a right turn when another scooter zoomed by on her right side. She had swerved out of shock and to avoid colliding with the other scooter and put herself right in the path of a speeding car barreling down the alley. The car had screeched to a stop, but not before hitting Julia, knocking her and her bike to the ground.

The scooter, Julia attached, had slid several yards before stopping just short of the traffic intersection.

Then to add insult to serious injury, the driver got out of the car and started to insult Julia with a barrage of some of the nastiest Taiwanese curses she had ever heard. Even though Julia was cut and bleeding, lying on the pavement in the middle of Taipei, with one leg trapped underneath her heavily damaged scooter. Luckily, some pedestrians had rushed to her aid, and gotten her free of the scooter. The police was summoned as well as an ambulance, and the general consensus was that it was the other scooter’s fault. The one that got away.

Julia’s x-ray showed a complete fracture in her fibula or tibia, I forget which. After the x-ray, we waited with Julia until a doctor finally showed up to set Julia’s broken leg in a cast. The doctor was quite wonderful. He had absolutely flawless bedside manners, and he managed to coax some small smiles out of Julia: the first that Mandy and I had seen all night. His English was impeccable, and he helped the three of us, hapless in technical Chinese, understand what he was doing to Julia’s leg and what she should expect over the next few months.

He was also very, very cute. I wonder if he is single (bad, Jody, bad…).

By the time we got home, it was almost one in the morning. Julia called one of her brothers back in the States and sobbed into the phone some more. I felt awful for Julia: this is the kind of Taiwan moment when you’d give up all the excitement and thrill of being an “independent woman” in a foreign land for a familiar environment, a childhood bed, and a mother who will take care of all the problems.

***

My friend Lisa wrote me an email from Maryland. She’s just gotten engaged and wanted to know if I would be a bridesmaid at her wedding next February. Which was a surprise, since I didn’t even know she was seeing anyone. I called her shortly after I received her email and she told me that she met her fiancé 6 months ago and they have been dating since May. So of course I told her I would be a bridesmaid, which means that I’ll have to spend another thousand plus dollars to get back to the States in the middle of the winter. *sigh* The injustices a single girl living abroad has to deal with: not only am I so out of the dating game that “the rules” have already expired and gone stale, I have to spend a small fortune every time another one of my sensible, responsible, and mature girlfriends from home gets married.

Lisa wants me to visit her in Maryland when I go back to the east coast for my vacation. So that I can get fitted for the bridesmaid dress that has already been ordered and is inevitably some aquamarine concoction that only a bride could love. [next entry]

2001-08-13T01:40:00.000-07:00

This entry was suppose to be posted on Friday.

(1) Hottie of the week: the guy on the tea commercial who is shaving his beard while sipping tea from a straw, leaving only a goatee behind. Something about him is so yummy.
(2) Pet peeve of the week: office politics. Luckily not mine. Just in general.
(3) Restaurant of the week: Salsa Bistro just north of the Hsin Yi and An Ho intersection. I really can’t say enough about this restaurant.
(4) Jody’s weekly progress towards Technological Nirvana: Ordered the book Building a Web Site for Dummies on Amazon.com. Unfortunately, I won’t actually get the book until I go back to the States at the end of the month, so I don’t know if it counts.

Boy, I have been swamped with work. Besides learning about the graphics designers and their latest projects, and catching up on all of our client files, I’ve also learned for the first time the true genius of flex time. When I was just doing modeling work for my boss, I pretty much came and went as I wanted – as long as I delivered my models on time, the boss was happy. But now, apparently I have to set an example for the graphics designers. Which means 9 to 6, baby! And only an hour for lunch. Not nearly enough time to get in a really good shopping run. *sigh*

Everyone seems to be very responsive to my coming into the department. I guess they think that anything that takes them one degree away from the watchful eyes of Phil is a good thing.

Later this week, Phil and I will start interviewing graphics designers for the open position. Apparently, we have had almost 10 qualified responses to our advertisement, which is pretty impressive. I guess the economic slowdown is really starting to impact the job market.

***

Have I mentioned that I’m going back to the States at the end of the month? I’ll be spending a week in the glorious city of New York, visiting my mom and dad. I already have a whole list of things I need to buy while I’m in the states. It’s a good thing that I’ve gotten a bit of a raise. And that the limit on my credit card just got increased.

After New York, I’ll be spending a week in beautiful (so I’m told) Madrid, where my cousin is getting married to her Spanish paramour. Luckily, my parents will be footing the bill for that trip, since it’s going to be an enormous family get-together. You know the Taiwanese: they’ll use any excuse to take an overseas trip. I don’t have anything to wear for the wedding.

***

I will write more soon. I promise. [next entry]

2001-08-07T01:52:00.000-07:00

Last night was a big girl’s night in. And without SATC on TV, we ended up just lounging around in the living room bitching about work, life and (the lack of) love. Mandy and I finally enlightened Julia about the enormous drama that had been happening between Jack and myself.

“Wow. What a dick.” Julia murmured.
“Jesus. I can’t believe he actually had the balls to send you a wedding invitation,” Mandy contributed, while flipping the invitation open and closed absent-mindedly in her hands.
I took the invitation from her and threw it into the garbage bin.
“Hey,” Mandy started, “that was good stock paper, and a pretty color. You could have saved it for one of your pieces.”
“No thanks,” I retorted. “I really don’t need that guy doing me any more favors.”

Mandy shared with us a story about a co-worker who is in a long-term relationship with a really strange guy.

“…So then they moved in together earlier this year, although they aren’t married and that’s ok, right? As long as the parents don’t find out. There are so many Taiwanese doing this nowadays.”
Julia and I nodded in agreement. It’s true. Increasingly, couples are living together, but there is often this tacit agreement to keep parents in the dark. I know several students who take their parent’s money to “theoretically” pay for a dormitory room and use it to cover rent on a shared apartment instead.
“But he goes and tells his mom. And she doesn’t get upset. In fact, she decides that she wants to come to Taipei for a bit and live with them!”
Julia and I started cracking up, rather unsympathetically.
“So now Wai is totally freaking out, because her boyfriend’s mother is sleeping on the floor of their tao fang [usually a larger single room with attached bathroom that is rented out as a separate unit] on a friggin’ foldout tatami mattress. And the mother’s feeling so happy and liberated that she’s talking about moving to Taipei and she’s asked her son to take her to bars and discos.”
“What do they do when they want to… you know.” I asked, though I’m gagging at this point and I was actually afraid of the answer.
“I don’t know. I guess they wait until the mother is out or something.”
“Oh, the poor girl,” Julia contributed, wiping away the single tear that was gathering at the edge of her eye.

Mandy went into her room and emerged with a full set of manicure equipment.

“Hey Mandy, where’d you get those shoes?” I pointed at a pair of navy mules that were sitting near the entranceway. They had about 2 inch, centered heels and were decorated with a discreet bead pattern that shimmered like sparklers when caught at just the right angle.
Um… I picked those up at Lane Crawford the last time I was in Hong Kong. Aren’t they cute?”
“Very. I want a pair.”

“Did you know that Felicity was voted by NOW as one of the most feminist shows on TV?” Julia fumed, waving a newspaper in the air.
“No… so what?” Mandy’s glaze was fixed on her nails, which she was buffing.
“So what? So plenty. The whole show is about a super neurotic, whiny, post adolescent female whose constant wavering between the loves of her life constitutes the bulk of her college experience. And whose biggest dilemma in life seems to be over the length of her hair.”
“Uh…. you mean there was more to college than that?” I said in mock horror. “Shit. Why didn’t anyone tell me?”
Julia started giggling. “How is it that there were so many great guys in college and such a complete void now? Where did they all disappear to?”
“The same place that socks disappear to,” Mandy proposed, her attention still intent on her cuticles.
“So what you’re saying is that if I could only find the partners to all the single socks in my sock drawer, I would find my own partner as well?” I queried.
“Exactly.”

When I was in first grade, my best friends were Maki and Ann-Marie. We were an inseparable trio: the three musketeers in floral skirts and mary-janes. We became friends when Ann-Marie told us that Steven Harrington had been pulling on her braids during class and how much it hurt. Maki reciprocated by admitting that she hated Alicia Grant, the prettiest and snobbiest girl in our class. Ann-Marie and I giggled conspiratorially because we felt the same way. I split my twinkies into thirds.

We have since parted company. Maki’s parents moved back to Japan in third grade and took her with them. Ann-Marie was sent to Catholic school after a few years in the public school system. But my pattern of establishing friendships with women hasn’t changed at all. Not in the 20+ years since those first attempts at fitting in.

Women share. It is the basis of our connection with our inner selves and with the women around us. We share: clothes, shoes, makeup, tampons (new – eww, some of you have really gross imaginations), stories, gossip, secrets, likes, dislikes, pet peeves, crushes, true loves, hopes and dreams. Some of the things we share are superficial. I don’t think knowing the latest and greatest eye shadow color will ever have an everlasting impact on achieving World Peace. But other times, we share in ways that are encouraging, uplifting, emotionally empowering. The strength of a friendship can often be determined by the depth of the sharing.

Men? Men compare. That’s why at every social event, the men split off into their little groups where they discuss one of the following: politics, the stock market, or sports. Then they throw numbers and facts at each other in a dance of one-upmanship until the room spins around dizzyingly. “Did you see the movement on that Ariba stock this week?” “I think that Bush’s attempt to tap into the Medicare surplus to make up for the reduced income from the tax break will mess everything up.” “Yea, did you see that homerun that Jeter hit yesterday? What’s his batting average anyways? Isn’t it something ridiculous like .38?” What’s worse, their interest in comparing leads to the second and more insidious habit of trading. It starts innocently enough in childhood: baseball cards and comic books and maybe Star Wars action figures. By late adolescence, the habit grows to encompass heavy machinery. And in adulthood, they start trading women. The mathematics is simple: you don’t trade unless you’re trading up, and the better the trade, the bigger the cahones!

It must have been a man who coined the phrase: “I’m trading her in for the latest model.”

As with everything in life, people fall into all different places on this share-compare spectrum. There are the “girly girls” who have a very difficult time with hard core “manly men”, because they want a man who will understand why they are heartbroken when Shannon Doherty of “Charmed” gets killed in the final episode of the 3rd season and replaced with Rose McGowan. There are the “guy’s girls” (tomboys, flirts) who know how to communicate with the men in their world of comparison shopping. And then there are “girl’s guys”, guys who are in touch with their “feminine side” and can actually lend a shoulder to cry on – no strings attached. A guy not unlike the character played by the very funny Mel Gibson in What Women Want.

The ancient Chinese, with their dual reality world of Yin and Yang, knew what they were talking about.

Isn’t this a fabulous world?

***

New sites that I really dig: Vicky for her wicked beauty and fashion sense and Cindy for her love of hedgehogs, the powerpuff girls and funky headpieces. [next entry]

2001-08-06T03:41:00.000-07:00

Hmm…, I obviously have to clear the air. I’ve gotten a few emails from people who really disliked my entry about the interaction between foreign men and local women. I’d like to begin by quoting my own blog. This is how that entry started:

[I am full of] resentment of the local women who are willing to accept so much less than they are worth, disgust for the foreign (all races) men who take advantage of it.

I see how this sentence can be taken in two ways, but what I meant was: (1) women who are willing to accept less than they are worth – I resent them, and (2) men who take advantage of these women – I resent them.

I did not then, nor do I now, mean to imply that all local women display this kind of sycophantic masochism tendency nor do I mean to imply that all foreign men are such cretinous slimes. I am also not implying that all inter-racial relationships are based on some sort of dominant/subservient model. But let’s be honest. Stereotypes exist for a reason. And I will kiss any long-term visitor to Taiwan who says that he/she has never seen a relationship that reeks of all the bad metaphors from the world of Suzy Wong.

I was really upset when I heard about this strange relationship chess that was being played way across town. I know the two girls in question: I don’t think they’re naïve – not exactly, but I don’t feel like they deserve to be treated the way they have been. Of course, I’m being supercilious, and the girls have the right to date any man they want, regardless of what I think. But that's why this is my blog and not theirs. Deal with it.

Ok, enough on this topic… it bores me.

***

Julia, Mandy and I went out to dinner on Saturday at an amazing restaurant just north of the An Ho and Hsin Yi intersection. The restaurant is called “Salsa Bistro” and is in the space that Mykonoes (the only Greek Restaurant in Taipei) used to be. They’ve done an unbelievable restoration of the space: converted it from the original stucco Mediterranean theme (imagine white walls, patio umbrellas on the inside and plastic grapes dangling from the ceiling) into a warm South American bistro. Beautiful false brick façade, shelves cleverly adorned with bright and festive sun belt pottery.

And the food… gastronomic bliss. They had this pumpkin bread that was incredibly dense and full of flavor, which was served with an herb paste that brought out the richness and savouriness of the herbs in a completely unique way. The salmon was baked to perfection, flaky and still delectably moist. And it was served with this cabbage and artichoke side dish that was uncomplicated yet creative and explosive on the palate. I’m getting hungry just thinking about that meal.

We all agreed that this was a New York worthy restaurant. But of course, that’s because two of us think that the world, sun, moon and stars revolves around The City. (Yes, we’re incredibly annoying and pompous that way.)

This is nothing but a shameless plug for the restaurant. So I will stop now.

***

On a final note: I saw Planet of the Apes last night. It was nominally entertaining and I loved seeing Helena Bonham Carter as an ape. However, some points worth noting:

(1) The lead girl monkey had such an obvious thing for the lead human guy. Was this some kinky Hollywood wink of approval for bestiality?
(2) There was a really stupid token T&A character in the movie. The woman was wearing a costume straight out of Barbarella (yes, that wonderful Jane Fonda vehicle that we all know and love). Although she was in 75% of the movie, I think she had maybe two coherent lines in the entire film.
(3) There is a scene where all the human slaves in the ape Senator’s household make a break for freedom except for the Asian woman!!! I don’t even want to get started on what the underlying message behind that scene might be. [next entry]

2001-08-03T02:03:00.000-07:00

Ok, something new:

(1) Hottie of the week: the guy who plays Balthazar/Cole on Charmed. To die for.
(2) Pet Peeve of the week: taxi drivers who will do anything to get a fare. Including running red lights, making illegal u-turns, almost killing said fare….
(3) Restaurant of the week: Pucci’s on the corner of Hsin Yi and An Ho – good sandwiches and open late every night!
(4) Jody’s weekly progress towards Technological Nirvana: added a guest book to my blog. Sign it if you’re so inclined. If you don’t, I’ll end up signing up lots of ghost guests so I don’t feel so small and unloved. : p

***

I start my new job managing the graphics design group next week. Luckily, the business has been steady and even growing (just a smidgen) while the rest of the world economy goes to the crapper – though I know Phil’s preparing for the worst – he walks around with a perpetual ring of perspiration around the crown of his bald head. I think the state of the business was artificially buoyed by one of our bigger competitors going out of business (Phil’s joy was palatable). Everyone is concerned about what might happen after we finish riding the wave of this particular economic reprieve.

I will be managing four graphics designers, and Phil is looking to hire one more. The problem of managing graphics designers is that I have none of the competencies that they have. I am a complete technophobe entering an area of art that has become increasingly tech-conscious (in fact, I started this blog as an attempt to begin to get over this particular phobia). I get easily flustered when accosted with words like “Photoshop”, “CorelDraw”, “flash media”, or “html”.

But I guess the bulk of my new job is to deal with the clients as oppose to whipping up fabulous, deal cinching designs. Well, that and manage the designers. *sigh* And artists are so temperamental.

***

I’m pretty sure Jeremy has never dated another non-Asian woman since breaking up with Mandy. Of course, I can’t possibly know that for sure except that New York is a small place, and both Mandy and I know people there who know people and who have always kept us in the loop about what Jeremy is or isn’t up to.

Jeremy’s visit to Seattle was an unmitigated disaster. Mandy had put Jeremy through a rigorous training program (Chinese parents 101) before leaving New York, but the “chi” was all wrong from the beginning.

For one, Jeremy decided to show off his encyclopedic knowledge of the stock market. And although playing stocks probably ranks right up there with Mah Jong and horse racing as prime entertainment for many Chinese, Mandy’s parents had never had much use for this particular form of legalized gambling. “A waste of money,” according to Mandy’s father. “Might as well just burn it -- and let the ancestors have a good banquet.”

Then, Jeremy erred on the side of showing too much affection. On their first night in Seattle, after finishing dinner and retiring to the living room for tea and dessert, Jeremy sat hip to hip with Mandy on the couch, though she did her best to discreetly put an inch of air between them. At various moments that evening, Jeremy put his arms around her waist, and once, his hand on her bare knee. Under any other circumstance, Mandy would have been thrilled at the suggestion of intimacy behind such gestures, but somehow, under the glare of her father’s disapproving yet discreetly pursed lips, Mandy felt like she was shrinking back into the girl she had once been, desperate for affirmation from her father.

Within 24 hours, Mandy’s father had childishly stopped speaking in English and started haranguing Mandy ceaselessly in a detectably disapproving tone of Mandarin. Jeremy maintained his civility in the face of such frigid disregard for a few days before he finally succumbing to fairly passive aggressive behaviour. He took to roaming around the house in an slovenly state of half-undress, leaving unwashed glasses on every table he could, and pawing at Mandy exaggeratedly whenever her father was anywhere in the vicinity. After a day of this, even Mandy had to admit that there was nothing quite as unattractive as a 30-year old man acting like a petulant teenager.

The only saving grace was Mandy’s mother. When she saw her husband behaving in such an uncompromising and childish way, she was far more disposed to like Jeremy (with an element of pity) than she had been initially. After her husband stomped off to work in the mornings, she would wake Mandy and Jeremy and prepare them a large breakfast, and the three of them would sit and eat, grabbing an unusual hour of adult behavior. Mandy found a lifetime of respect and gratitude for her mother from that one week of kindness.

But Mandy definitely didn’t have the same kind of warm and fuzzy feeling for Jeremy that week. A few days into the “vacation”, she finally bullied Jeremy into a conversation.

“What’s wrong with you?” She started, though she hated the accusatory tone in her own voice. She continued, lowering her voice an octave, “why are you acting like this?”
“What do you mean?” Jeremy replied, his lower lip stuck out peevishly. “I’m not doing anything.”
“You’re acting like a moron… a totally immature and spoiled moron too, by the way.”
“Look. I deal with assholes everyday at work. And through it all, I have to smile and act like it’s no big deal, that they’re my best friends. I don’t need this shit when I’m on vacation.”
“I told you it wouldn’t be easy for my parents to accept that I’m dating someone who is not Chinese. And now, you’re confirming everything they thought about White people. That they’re coarse, obnoxious, and… and… and… barbaric”
“Ha! That’s a good one. Oh, I’m the one who’s barbaric when your father doesn’t even have the decency to say good morning to me. And you… why are you so pathetic? You’ve barely said anything since you’ve been here outside of – ‘oh, let me help with that, daddy’, ‘here’s your mail, daddy’, or ‘can I get you anything, daddy’? Don’t you talk to your parents about anything? Like the fact that you have a life in New York that they apparently know nothing about?” Jeremy ended the conversation by storming into the bathroom, shutting the door behind him.

Mandy felt her breath catch in her throat. Was it so strange to have a life out there and a life in here? Her life had always been segregated: there was her life with her parents and then her life outside her parents. No matter how hard she tried to stir the two together, they would always end up separating in the end. Like oil and water. There was no magical emulsifier.

Mandy had always been slightly mystified by the closeness that Jeremy shared with his family. He talked with his mother and father weekly, although they were divorced and living in different cities, neither one in New York. When Jeremy needed advice on work, on grout, or even on more personal issues, he talked to his parents. Mandy had always assumed that the reason one would live in a different city from one’s parent was to avoid that kind of daily reporting. She could not imagine sharing her stories about the co-workers from hell or the emptiness of happy hours in New York with her father.

They say you should keep your enemies closer than your friends. But how close should you keep your parents?

***

I got a wedding invitation in the mail yesterday. It was a beautiful heavy stock paper, crimson red, with the double happiness symbol on the cover in matte gold. Simple and elegant and tasteful. I felt sick when I opened it. The inset paper leaf slipped out and drifted to the floor.

Jack’s getting married on September 15th. I’m shocked to even be invited; I’m assuming Mike must have put him up to it. I didn’t recognize the church, but I know the venue that they’ve chosen for the Wedding Banquet. They must be spending a fortune on this thing.

I was livid. I still am. And then I wept inconsolably for an hour before Mandy finally came into my room with a mug of herbal tea. She had seen the invitation laying on the coffee table and guessed the source of my distress. She always knows exactly what to do.

I’m bewildered by the magnitude of my grief. I don’t have very much vested in this whole “Jack” thing. I barely know him, and what has happened in the last few weeks have been a mysterious flirtation, inexplicable and X-files bizarre. But it has been exhilarating to re-experience the first twinges of romance and lust. I had forgotten how much these feelings enrich my life. You know that old cliché about being in love with being in love. *sigh*

I was completely bewitched by the package (not that package… I never saw that package) – the good job, great wardrobe, sophistication and slippery smooth charm. My own superficiality screams like a banshee sitting on my shoulder. I was so easily manipulated. Some sappy lines about an unhappy relationship and I was already envisioning a future with a man who already has a (almost) wife and a (almost) child. Meanwhile, I am constantly dismissing the men I interact with on a day to day basis – the nice, single men who play no games and have therefore never cultivated the skills necessary to even get into the game. Why do I ask for honesty but then run from the first signs of it?

I have decided (1) not to go to the wedding and (2) not to put myself in the position of seeing Jack anymore. As far as I’m concerned, he is persona non grata from here on forth. [next entry]

2001-08-02T18:35:00.000-07:00

Blogger's been really funky for the past few days. But it looks like it is finally back up and running. Yeah! I've posted Wednesday's blog entry, and I'll post more later today. Found a new place to eat last night -- Pucci's, a small cafe/bakery on the corner of Ren Ai and Hsin Yi... I don't know why I've never gone in before. They have a pretty yummy egg salad sandwich.

2001-08-01T02:29:00.000-07:00

I reread my entry from yesterday and although I’m tempted to just delete its ass, I think I’ll leave it for posterity. Man, was I ever in a foul mood. I was definitely doing an “Elaine”.

I used to date this guy back in college who was really mediocre in so many ways. In retrospect, I have no idea why I went out with him, but at the time, I can say that I was 100%, completely and totally smitten. For the record, yes, he was white, not that it matters, and no, he was not gorgeous, not by any means. Even I (in the midst of my infatuation) knew that he would never win a beauty contest – but I found his dark, tortured soul looks deeply attractive. (Think Brandon Lee in the Crow)

We dated for about a month. And we were getting along fabulously. We were that smug couple that steals kisses when they think no one else is looking, that made excuses after having dinner with friends to run back home and jump into bed, that called each other cloying and nauseating pet names (though nothing so saccharine as ‘pooky’ or ‘sweetums’). Then he suddenly stopped calling me. Completely.

I did my best psycho ex-girlfriend routine and started stalking him. (Well, not really – I followed him around for maybe a day.) I finally cornered him in a mostly empty student lounge in the middle of the night.

“Was it me? Was it something I did?” I wailed, eyes blearing with tears, nose clogged with snot. (Yes, very attractive.)
He looked stricken. “No, Jody, you didn’t do anything. I just don’t think we should… you know… go out anymore.”
“Why?” I moaned, “Are you seeing (theeing) someone else? Is it that girl you were having dinner with tonight?”
“What girl? How do you know who I had dinner with tonight?”
“I… (gagging) saw… you…”
“No. She’s just my lab partner. And I don’t think we need to discuss this here.”
“Yes we do.” I was hysterical at this point, “we need to discuss this right now.”
“Look,” he grabbed me by the elbow and directed us to a discreet corner by the vending machines, “it’s not a big deal. I just don’t want to date you anymore.”
“But why?”
He sighed and looked visibly annoyed. “Ok, honestly? You’re cute and all, but Jody, you’re just not attractive enough for me. I just think my stock is rising and yours isn’t. Do you understand what I mean?”

I got over that loser. But what the hell did he mean? His stock was rising and mine wasn’t? What’s the point of having stocks if they aren’t going to rise?

So I have an enormous chip on my shoulder when it comes to beautiful women. I feel nothing when beautiful women date beautiful men. I only smolder when I see beautiful women with average looking guys. (Be they beautiful Asian or non-Asian women with white or not-white guys.) Because when that happens, what’s left over for us average gals?

There’s an ageless theory that men are more influenced by visual stimuli than women. Which is supposedly why men are perpetually pursuing beauty whereas women tend towards power, money or, to be nice, stability. But the enlightened modern citizen is supposed to look beyond the superficial and choose their partner based on something more, something on the “inside”. The soul, spirit, shared values, chi, blah blah blah… But what distinguishes the superficial from the real? How can we qualify such abstract notions?

An attractive woman can be intelligent and never have to use her intelligence. Does that make her dumb or smart? She can be sweet and kind and loving because she has always received similar adoration in spades. Or she can be snobby and haughty because she has always been told she was superior to others. Is her personality real? Or just a reflection of her appearance?

Similarly, a man with money can be independent, ambitious, driven and proud because he has always had the means to support his dreams. When a woman finds him attractive, is she attracted to the scent of cold hard cash, or to the confidence he exudes? Maybe they are one and the same?

And how depressed would I be if beauty on the outside is the precursor for beauty on the inside?

***

Ok, I’m about a day behind in my blogging. So sue me.

On Monday afternoon, I dragged my sorry ass to Jack’s place (where Mike is staying) to beg for forgiveness. Jack opened the door. He looked deliciously bedraggled in a wrinkled and campy Big Dog T-shirt and a pair of equally wrinkled Khaki shorts. And his countenance was even more devastating with his 2-day-old beard shadow. What is it about the unshorn man that makes me want to jump into his lap and lick him like a lovesick puppy?

Mike was loitering on the living room couch and looked up when I came in. He gave me the goofiest grin and I knew he had already forgiven me for my previous day’s transgression. I guess he must have chalked it up to PMS or some other dreaded “woman’s problem”. Mike and I have enough of a shared history that we have come to grudgingly accept the little annoying foibles that make us… unique.

I joined Mike in his sofa flop. Jack brought me a Diet Coke (how did he know? I am the ultimate Diet Coke fiend).

Mike was watching the last half of a really bad movie on HBO or Cinemax: some forgettable plot plowed through forgettably by some forgettable actors. About half an hour after arriving, I actually fell asleep on the sofa - partly because the movie was so unforgivably inane and partly because Jack’s couch is really fluffy and seducingly comfortable.

When I woke up, the TV had been turned off, Mike was nowhere to be seen and Jack was sitting next to me, reading a magazine and gently running his fingers through my hair. I ignored my gut instinct to freak out and instead continued to lie very still on the couch, pretending to be in a state of unconscious reverie, enjoying the sensation of Jack’s fingers flitting across the top of my head.

Mike walked in from the kitchen with an open can of beer and sat in the adjoining lounge chair, completely absorbed in the sports pages of the China Post. My eyes were hurting from trying to watch him through half opened eyes and without moving my head. So I faked my best “waking up” stir, sighed audibly and shifted onto my back from my prior fetal position.

When my eyes opened and adjusted to the light in the room, the first thing I saw was Jack looking down at me, smiling warmly. I suppose the smile could have easily been friendly, even brotherly, but I think I must have fallen in love right at that moment. I felt a bubbly warmth surge through me and a sudden flurry of emotion in my stomach. I can’t think of a nicer thing to open my eyes to than the sight of a man smiling so fondly at me.

I give up. [next entry]

2001-07-30T21:50:00.000-07:00

Had a wonderful weekend, including the unexpected bonus of getting Monday off due to Typhoon Toraji.

I went to see Wu Bai and China Blue, a fairly popular local Chinese rock band on Friday night. I was reluctant at first: although I enjoy the music of Wu Bai, I don’t really relish spending my free time packed ass to crotch in the fire hazard death trap of a Taiwanese dance club. But Julia is a huge fan of Wu Bai and had already purchased four tickets. Her enthusiasm won out in the end and we (along with two of Julia’s Taiwanese friends) found ourselves standing in a long, winding queue outside the @live on Ho Ping West Road.

I was way overdressed for the occasion. I was wearing a D&G dress with all over sequins that I had bought last week at a 50% discount from the Sunrise department store (oh, have I mentioned that all of Asia is in major mark-down mode right now – it’s enough to drive a girl to distraction!). The dress was sort of trashy, sort of punk rock: I thought it would be perfect for a rock concert. I was also wearing spiky low heel shoes. Big mistake. Not only was everyone at the concert dressed down in Ts and jeans, it was such a packed house that we had to stand for about an hour before the performance started and then another half hour each between sets and between the last set and the encore. A total of about 3 ½ hours of standing more or less still, with sporadic bursts of frenzied grunge-like jumping up and down in place. My feet were absolutely numb with pain by the end of the concert.

At least the music soothed the ravaged feet.

Seeing Wu Bai live was amazing. His performance was electric and had the audience mesmerized. The audience was actually a wonderfully eclectic mix of the very young and the not so young. There were quite a few people in the audience who looked in their late 30s or even into their 40s, rocking it right along side kids not so far into their teens. And everyone knew the lyrics. Everyone. Except me. Even Julia was belting out a few of the tunes, including some in Taiwanese. Which was very impressive.

***

Mandy and I threw a small dinner party Sunday night for a few friends. We cooked an enormous pot of marinara sauce with chorizo sausage and green peppers and a large salad. Elly and Dave brought two bottles of red wine and two of Mandy’s co-workers, Wendy and Su-Yang brought a few plates of Chinese appetizers (spring rolls and drunken chicken). Julia would have joined us except she was busy entertaining some out of town friends from Hong Kong, and they were spending most of their time at the three day long Formoz Rock Festival in town, featuring such timeless musical talents as Megadeath and BioHazard.

Dinner started tame enough – a lot of introductory chitchat. Schools attended, jobs held, shared faces and places. Wendy graduated from Tai Da (NTU) and Su-Yang from Cheng-chi University (I’m sure I’m spelling this incorrectly). They both attended business school at Penn State, which is also where they met. And they both work at Mandy’s company now, one as the CFO and one as the Comptroller. Heck if I know what that means. I have no head for anything even vaguely related to finance.

Then Mandy tore into her boss, the general merchandise manager, doing an imitation of her that made the two girls guffawing like hyenas. By Mandy’s imitation, I would say that her boss is a strange elixir of Miss Haversham and Cruella DeVille. Who would have thought such bizarreness could reside in the Pleasantville of Taipei?

Wendy and Su-Yang left shortly after dinner, and Dave went upstairs right after to catch up on some work. By this point, we knew that work was cancelled for the following day, so Mandy, Elly and I settled back for some serious girl-talk. We were interrupted by the intercom and Mike’s surprise appearance. He was nowhere in the neighborhood and decided to stop by on a whim. Mandy’s a great fan of Mike’s so he joined us for a glass of vino.

Elly had the best gossip of the night by far: she told us about a fairly bizarre “love polygon” taking shape in town. “Jim” is a non-Asian American who’s been in Taiwan for several years, mostly just teaching English, but he has also become something of a performer and has a reasonably sized following among the locals. He has been dating “Melissa”, an incredibly attractive and naively sweet local girl, for about 2 years, during which time he has apparently been cheating on her incessantly. After living with the knowledge of his infidelities for at least a year, Melissa finally called it quits and started dating “Bob”, who is another non-Asian American and a friend of Jim’s. But it gets worse.

Bob has recently become Jim’s manager/agent, but Jim doesn’t know (yet) that Bob is dating Melissa. And Bob used to date “Linda”, another incredibly attractive and naively sweet local girl who just happens to be Melissa’s best friend. Linda is now dating “Kevin”, yet another non-Asian American who has just recently left Taiwan to take a long tour of Southeast Asia with a yet-to-be-determined return date.

After Elly shared with us the contortions of this ménage à cinq, Mike just sat back and said, “Jim’s a total loser. Melissa is unbelievably beautiful and smart and sweet, and if I was the marrying kind, I would marry her in a second.”

Ok, I lost it. I started screaming at Mike. (Flash to scene of scary Glenn Close in Fatal Attraction. Very not good.) “You self-righteous white prick (Ok, I don’t think I really said that, but it’s what I felt), you did the exact same thing to Cynthia like three years ago. That’s all you white guys do in Taiwan, dick over silly Chinese girls who don’t know any better.”

Then I threw a pillow at him.

When I saw my roommate’s saucer wide eyes, I blushed in mortification. (Can we say “repressed resentment”?) Mike very nonchalantly walked to the door, put on his shoes, and left.

Shit.

“What the hell Jody?” Mandy finally broke the silence. “Where did that come from?”
“I don’t know… Yikes… Should I go after him?”
“Might not be the best idea right now,” Elly interjected. “Maybe you should wait to call him tomorrow.”
We spent the rest of the evening “psycho-analyzing” my psycho outburst. I realized that it was a combination of so many things: resentment of the local women who are willing to accept so much less than they are worth, disgust for the foreign (all races) men who take advantage of it, and the loneliness of not being either one.

Let’s start with the local women. Like I said, Melissa and Linda are gorgeous. Not just cute or attractive, but strikingly beautiful. Their skin glistens with youth (I think they are both 20, if not 19), and they radiate the kind of playful sexiness that makes older women (read: me) glower with annoyance. And men are attracted to them like hopeless moths to fluorescent bug lights. Especially men like Mike, Mark (remember him? scary blind date Mark?), and Jack. Men who claim they admire independent, intelligent and sassy women turn 180 degrees and drool like morons when these lovely locals show up.

But the men they claim to be are the men that we want. Right? We’re all pining in hopes for the man who will look beyond the face and the body, who will love us for all the fierceness that makes us us: our energy, our competitiveness, our in-your-face attitudes, our balls-out pursuit of life.

Why? Because women know that the face and the body goes. But the attitude? The attitude endures a lifetime.

Men come to Taiwan trained by the über-PC society that is the United States to treat women as people (God Forbid!). But they are automatically accosted by legions of enticing women who offer themselves up as if they were tasty treats at an all-you-can-eat buffet. For some unknown reason, some of the loveliest of the Taiwanese women have taken it into their heads that the best catches are foreign men. Despite the fact that I’m sure it is statically rare for a foreign man to actually marry a local woman, and that even monetarily, there are plenty of local men now who can hold an enormous flaming candle financially to their foreign counterpart’s barely lit match.

Maybe it’s the promise of a green card. Maybe it’s that certain je ne sais quoi.

And we discover the first truism of being male. For all their modern enlightenment, their list of desired attributes in women still goes something like this:

Face (you have to like what you’re looking at when you are having sex; plus, it doesn’t hurt that other men want to have sex with someone you’re having sex with.)
Tits and Ass (you have to like what you’re feeling when you are having sex, also, see face.)
Legs (the longer and fitter the better to run to the bed to have sex.)
Stomach and Hips (ok, throw a bit of Darwinian procreation theory in, also having to do with sex.)
“Niceness” (also known as: how willing a woman is to have sex.)
Intelligence (enough so the woman knows how to have sex.)

And they find it all in the local women. And when the first 4 attributes of any one woman “goes” (or gets “repetitive”), there’s always an easy replacement right around the corner.

I went to a party up at Tien Mu a few weeks ago. I don’t even know why I was invited. There were a bunch of 40 to 50 year old white men, all paunchy and pasty and slovenly drunk. They were surrounded by women about my age, whose pancaked make-up couldn’t disguise their weary eyes and slightly droopy jaw lines. These women were still dressed like Brittney Spears, but their sexy animal print bikini and backless tops and tight pants served only to emphasize their no longer perky breasts and no longer drum tight stomachs. These women were flirting unabashedly with the older men, literally doing parlour tricks for snippets of attention. The entire circus made me uneasy and queasy. Is this the fate for Melissa and Linda? And all of their fellow Taiwanese Lolitas?

And if this is their fate, what will mine be? And suddenly, Mandy’s impression of her boss isn’t so funny anymore.

Why should any man care about love when there is so much lovin’ to be had?

Ok. This is my bitter woman entry. I will try for bright and chipper next time. [next entry]

2001-07-25T00:30:00.000-07:00

“So right now, I’m really into the whole girl power thing, except that there is one thing that kind of bothers me about it all.” Mike and I have finished dinner at this point and we’re just sitting at the “Technology Monkey House” facing picked through dishes and two large mugs of beer.
“What?”
“What is up with the whole triumvirate thing? Why are there always three girls?” I start counting on my fingers, “There’s Charlie’s Angels, three, the Charmed ones, three, the Powerpuff Girls, three, even Destiny’s Child, three. Of course, there are the girls from Sex and the City, but they’re not really about girl power… they’re more like neurotic everywoman.”
“There’s Buffy.” Mike countered.
“Yeah, but her show was totally rescued by that Angel guy. And that’s just not cool.”
“And Lara Croft.”
“True. But I haven’t seen that movie yet. And that doesn’t negate the preponderance of three.”
“Well, maybe it’s like this. One is too intimidating. No one wants to think that they have to do all the work by themselves. And two, well, that’s just too lesbian. Like Xena and her side kick.”
I throw a used paper napkin at Mike’s head.
“Well, they are.”
“Yeah, and she gets decapitated for it.” (Sorry if I spoiled the ending for anyone.)

***

Mike has a really huge crush on this woman that works at the coffee shop at the Eslite Bookstore on the Ren Ai circle. In the past week or so, he has even started to plan his days around visiting the bookstore at the appropriate times so that he can be there when she is on shift. He says that he finally talked to her over the weekend and discovered that she has only been working at the coffee shop for a few weeks.

But he has had a crush on the woman for over a month.

He thinks that there must be two of them. Two women working at the Eslite coffee shop who look enough alike that he has mistaken them for each other. And he wonders which one is the one he really has a crush on, and what would happen if he should ever talk to the other one, thinking she is the one he has already talked to. And what if they are twins?

I think he likes the last possibility the best.

***

I am starting to realize that once Mike leaves Taiwan in August, I will have no pretext for seeing Jack for another year. This could be a very good thing. Not that I’ve thought about Jack recently. I’ve been too pooped from work. But seeing Mike wax romantic about the girl at Eslite has made me just the tiniest bit envious on the inside. I haven’t had a crush on anyone real for a long, long time. I discount Jack because he’s taken, and I discount the cute guy I saw on the elevator in my building today (tall, impeccably dressed, and just a glimmer of the devilish in his eyes) because I’ll never see him again.

And that’s when it strikes me. That Taiwan is an enormous Dali canvas. That everything is the same, common and ordinary, except scarily skewed: distorted and distended to fit into this alternate universe. Because in Taiwan, men have crushes and women don’t.

I think back on my pre-Taiwan days, when every girl’s night out was pretense for a gab-fest about our latest crushes: the cute guy who lived downstairs, the smart guy in the corner office, the built guy at the gym. We could dissect men for hours: interpreting every smile, every conversation, every email. Even on SATC (Sex and the City), the girls get together to talk about… their newest crushes. Sure, they also spend a lot of time talking about the lack of datable guys, but who’s kidding who? At least one of the girls gets laid every episode. My friends and I would take those odds anyday.

No… when I get together with other women in Taipei, we talk about the slim pickings in Taipei. Always. It is a rare day when someone actually says that they met someone. Interesting. Literate. Or even just evolved (we’ve lowered our standards some).

Ahh… but the men in Taipei. I walk down the street and am accosted by some guy professing his undying love for a nymphet or silky sex goddess (I am borrowing this term from an actual guy… figures) that he has met at the gym, a bar, Wellcome supermarket. Every time I turn around, I trip on one of these guys. They strike such tragic, pitiful figures until they reappear the following week with said nymphet or silky sex goddess draped on their arms. Then the cycle repeats ad nauseum. And this is not a white guy/ foreign guy thing. I’ve seen it from foreign guys, foreign guys who think they’re asian (you know who you are), asian guys who think they’re white, asian-american guys, asian-asian guys, and all the others too.

Taiwan is a man’s world. And though I’ve never questioned the bonanza like atmosphere of Taipei for men, why must the scale be so dramatically unbalanced? [next entry]

2001-07-23T00:17:00.000-07:00

I have been so unbelievably busy at work. But I hate talking about work, and even worse, I hate writing about it. I don’t have an exciting job; I am not captivated by my job; and I doubt that anyone out there could care even the smallest iota about the many times that my boss has run ranting into the office this week, his face crimson, sweat beads glistening on his bald head, and irrationally doled out minutes after minutes of the foulest Taiwanese I have heard since setting foot on this Isla Formosa.

I’m just grateful for the small wonders of soothing herbal tea and aroma-therapeutic bath washes which I use daily to purge away the tacky feeling of work that I carry home with me night after night.

And that’s when it hits me – why we are so addicted “Sex in the City” and “Friends” and other like-minded shows. The main characters never work, and when they do, what happens to them at work seem more like witty anecdotes that are primed to be retold dramatically at cocktail parties (ah ha… “situational comedy”… it suddenly becomes so clear) than bitch-fests about Performa invoices and ledgers and letters of credit that could only titillate the socially challenged.

Hmmm… I think I need a Cosmopolitan.

I am not ashamed to admit that Cosmopolitan is both my favourite drink and favourite magazine. I have been addicted to the magazine since the tender and suggestible age of sixteen and to the drink four or five years later. To me, they are basically interchangeable: pink and pretty on the outside, with no substance underneath the syrupy first sip. They are all the hair flipping, eyelash batting, trend-setting popular girls in high school that I emulated.

I love the bodice bulging, pouty-lipped poses on the cover of Cosmo (from now on, the abbreviated will be used to differentiate the glossy from the slushy). In fact, I aspire to be a Cosmo cover girl. Not that that could ever happen… unless I go to one of those slick Asian glamour photo shops and have a fake mast head super-imposed over some naff, semi-pornographic picture of me. Not that I have the breasts to carry off semi-pornographic. Of course, I’ve heard that they can do wonders with duct tape…

Even the weekend was obscured by work (was it the weekend? Was it the weekend?). I went into the office on Saturday, and was actually not the only person there. Have we lost our mind? Let’s face it, we all silently celebrated when the Taiwanese government was finally enlightened enough to legislate against “half-day Saturdays” (just a year ago, most Taiwanese companies had office hours 5 days a week and 9 to 12 on Saturdays). “Half-day Saturdays” were completely moronic: not only could I not go out on Friday nights because I had to get up and be vaguely conscious the next morning, I was so dead tired by Saturday night that I was a reluctant party-goer at best. It was during my many years working for Taiwanese companies and dealing with “half-day Saturdays” that I learned about the reduced tolerance a body has for alcohol when previously beaten down by the trials and tribulations of work and one too many lattes.

I did put the final touches on my presentation on Saturday, which meant that Sunday was, blissfully, mine. Unfortunately, my roommates did not share my point of view. Apparently, they think that I’ve been “slacking” off on my housekeeping duties for the past few weeks. So they have been, graciously, piling unwashed dishes in the sink and leaving overflowing garbage cans untended for the past few days in eager anticipation of my emancipation.

Sometimes, I really hate living with roommates.

I did talk to Mike this weekend. He is quickly approaching the end of his summer stay in Taiwan. He’s leaving sometime in the middle of August and we have not been seeing nearly enough of each other. He has called me several times these last two weeks, and has professed to seeing the error of his ways. Needless to say, I was not exactly Mother Teresa with my compassion.

“What’s wrong now?”
“Oh, I just wonder if I’m going about things all wrong… I’m starting to find the whole one night stand scene completely unsatisfying.”
“This coming from the man who knows when ladies’ night is at every single bar and disco in Taiwan.” (Sarcasm is the lowest form of humour.)
“They say you can’t teach an old dog new tricks,” (deep sigh), “and that’s what I’m afraid of….”
“You are so full of crap. You are just nearing the end of another romp-fest, or should I say rump-fest, in Taiwan. And you’ve gotten so much pussy this summer that you’re emoting guilt so that you don’t have to admit to yourself that your behaviour all summer was misogynistic and, by the way, completely colonialistic to boot.” (Where do I come up with this shit?)
Mike was actually silenced by this outburst for a second, before he started cracking up and replied, “Man, are you PMS-ing or what?”
I was, but there was no way I was going to admit that to a man. And the fact that he had pinpointed the source of my bile only made me ever the more virulent. I hung up on him hooting and hollering on the other end.

We made up. We always make up. So we had dinner last night at, of all the strange place, the “Technology Monkey House” on the corner of Ming Sheng West Road and the Hsing Sheng overpass highway. I’ve always passed the Monkey House when zipping from Taipei to Shi Lin or Tien Mou on the highway, but in all the years that I’ve been in Taiwan, I have never once actually eaten at the “Technology Monkey House”. Taipei is like that: there are always places that linger on the edge of our consciousness – places that we see as we taxi from destination to destination, or places that a friend of a friend talks about all the time – but we never actually visit. Well, I now have the fortune of being able to say that I have, in fact, been to the “Technology Monkey House”. And it was everything I had hoped for.

There were papier-mâché monkeys climbing up the walls, sitting on the window ledges, peering over lighting fixtures, each monkey equipped with a space-age astronautical helmet or headpiece (thus, the “Technology” in the restaurant name). The lights of the restaurant were actually encased in plastic lamp coverings molded in the form of flying saucers. And to add bizarre to the mere eccentric, a man of unclear origin (Polynesian? African? Samoan?) was crooning English and Taiwanese songs to the crowd as we sat down to order dinner.

Dinner was surprisingly palatable, especially the barbeque plates, which look to be the restaurant’s specialties. We had an interesting conversation, but I’ll get into that at a later time.

***

I want to know how Suzy's weekend went... isn't anyone else interested? [next entry]

2001-07-13T01:42:00.000-07:00

I’ve been on the road for the past week, driving along the windy winding roads that proliferate in scenic New England. I’ve been in Vermont, New Hampshire and now I am finally camped out in my ex-boyfriend’s house near Boston. My friends back home and far abroad think I am crazy to be spending time in the domicile of an ex, but his house is gorgeous, huge, and very very free (and that’s including housing, parking, a stocked refrigerator and a maid that cooked for us and is actually doing my laundry as I write). What can I say? I am the very model of the modern spoiled Chinese girl.

I arrived in Boston Wednesday afternoon, just in time to catch the sun setting over the Charles river, doing that scientifically astounding trick of being bent by the air in just the right way to create a ethereal moment full of war like colors, so momentous and violent that I am surprised it isn’t accompanied by a full orchestral score. Instead, I just hear Destiny’s Child on my tinny car stereo: and as much as I revere Destiny’s Child, they don’t quite measure up to the magnificence.

I grabbed dinner in Cambridge with a friend who is the eternally suffering scholar, still doing her PhD at the advanced age of 33. But it should be said that she has dedicated her life to the pursuit of intellectual enlightenment for herself and others, which I cannot dispute seems a loftier goal than mine of having a good shag before I hand in my PTO deduction papers. (I love the word ‘shag’ – I fully intend to start a movement to incorporate the word into American colloquial so that I can use it all the time and not get strange looks.)

Claire is doing her PhD in philosophy. Eastern philosophy. Yes, she buries herself day and night in Buddha, Lao-Tse, Kung-Tse (Confucious), and even Chairman Mao. The poor girl, her life being strangled out of her by dead yellow guys. But I joke, because Claire loves what she is doing and she gets quite teary eyed sometimes when she talks about her dissertation (she is, knock on wood, maybe one year away from finishing).

Many hours after dinner, I finally mosey over to Patrick’s pad. (I love alliterations.) Patrick was, of course, still at work (he manages a fund that invests in Asia). His maid let me in as per his instructions.

I am not sure why Patrick is still single. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that he is totally overbearing, pretentious as hell, and always looks like his larger end is blocked by a very very large turd. Actually, scrape all that away and Patrick is a very sweet guy, a guy who will actually put his ex-girlfriend up for a few days even while knowing her first and foremost intent is to score a good shag (and not with him).

Let’s see what I manage to dig up these next few days, shall we? ; ) [next entry]

2001-07-05T00:09:00.000-07:00

Happy Fourth of July!! (Belated…)

(Hey Suz, no matter how bad the weather is in Maine, it can’t be worse than it is here: Typhoon Utor, a typhoon that is literally twice the size of Taiwan, just kicked by the south side of the country yesterday, bringing sporadic rains and no typhoon day for the residents of Taipei (pity). At least it’s cooler than it has been – Taiwan has had some of the hottest days of the past half century in the last week.)

There is a fairly popular saying among non-Asian men who date Asian women and it goes something like this: “once you’ve dated an Asian woman you can never go back.” Go back… presumably that’s going back to dating non-Asian women.

This is, or course, a happy urban myth, just like it is a happy urban myth that all New York women are neurotic, self-obsessed, vain little bitches that suck down Cosmopolitans and get laid by a different man every night (à la “Sex in the City” – good episode this week). And just like it is a happy urban myth that all ABC women (and CBCs, BBCs, and xBCs) are spoiled, snobby, indulgent and clueless brand-whores.

But let’s suppose that, as with all happy urban myths, there is a grain of truth to the saying. And let’s confuse the issue by supposing that there is also a grain of truth to the idea that gay men tend to date Asian women immediately prior to their own sexual realignment as per my last entry.

Does that mean that Asian women actually act as a kind of sophisticated train signal? Do we signal some men to their final destination while signaling other men to switch tracks?

Deep thoughts….

Please forgive me if I don’t update much in the next two weeks. I am working on a big project right now and the deadline is looming. I’m actually going to have to bite the bullet and work my ass off for the next two weeks. For all of you who have been reading this blog (due to my prodding no doubt) but have not written me email yet… you suck (just kidding). Anyways, write to me and I will write back. I promise.

Hey Suz, how about filling in the gap for me? [next entry]

2001-07-03T20:58:00.000-07:00

Hey sweetie!! Happy 4th. It's been cool so far this summer, hovering around the 70s. It isn't really beach weather but I'm going to try to get out to the ocean tomorrow. Hey, it's a holiday baby!!

2001-07-03T03:20:00.000-07:00

I've been complete bowled over between a huge looming deadline at work and an impromptu trip to Hong Kong that I took this weekend (courtesy Cathay frequent flier miles). A friend of mine from college was in HK for business, and she called me mid-week to pressure me into flying over to see her. This is how the conversation went:

"Oh, come on Jody, we haven't seen each other in like three or four years. Can't you come to HK for the weekend so we can catch up?"
"This is totally stupid, Ellen. I just came back from Japan, which was hugely draining on both my energy and wallet, and now you want me to just drop everything and go see you¡ in Hong Kong?? If you want to see me so badly, why don't you come to Taipei?"
"I can't," Ellen whinged (I hate whinging), "I'm going to be in meetings until really late Friday night, and I have to meet with an investor for drinks or something over the weekend."
"Well, what makes you think I don't have plans for the weekend?"
"Do you?"
"Well..., no...," I sputtered. The truth was, I had been so busy last week that I hadn't really put much thought into planning my social life. "But that's so not the point."
"Look, you won't even have to worry about a place to stay because you can stay with me."
"Where are you staying?"
"At the Hyatt Regency, on the Kowloon side."
"Is it nice?"
"Very."
I considered it for a few moments. Then I added, "How about meals and things?"
"All my treat, I promise, as long as you get yourself here."
"Even hotel services?" I pushed, picturing a massage and a sumptuous hotel spa.
"Sure, if you want."

Ellen is one of my best friends from college. She is Korean-American, a year younger than me, and studied computer graphics at Parsons. She has subsequently gotten involved in the whole dot-com world and I have no idea what she actually does for a living nowadays, except that she seems to travel extensively, though mostly in the US. We were practically inseparable my junior year at Parsons. It was all a bit high-schoolish, you know, sharing pens and pinching make-up and fake ids and twirling hair. But Ellen has one of those completely disarming personalities and we get along wickedly.

So I did the usual spineless Jody "thing" and headed to Hong Kong on an overbooked Cathay Pacific flight on Friday evening.

I got to the hotel just before midnight, and Ellen had the porter send me up to her room immediately. We hugged each other, squealing, and I instantly felt rejuvenated. Ellen has that effect on me. Being around her is like having a constant caffeinated high.

It turned out that Ellen was free until Sunday afternoon, so we spent most of Saturday shopping in Hong Kong, where they were already starting to mark down summer clothes. I always love shopping in Hong Kong. What other city in the world is built in the image of an enormous indoor mall? I've known girls who go to Hong Kong and manage never to surface to see daylight for weeks at a time. (Works wonders for that chalky white complexion that all Asian women strive to achieve.)

Since some of my favorite Asian brands, including the Toppy chains and G2000, are Hong Kong based brands, their products retail for much lower in Hong Kong than in Taipei. This, combined with the luxurious Lane Crawford department stores which I walk through in a daze, lovingly touching all the wonderful, sumptuous things that I cannot afford (including a pair of Jimmy Choo shoes that literally made me cry), makes shopping in Hong Kong a totally religious experience. By the end of the day, I had picked up a beautiful multi-hued blue spaghetti strap dress and matching sweater from Jessica, a pair of crystal earrings, some very standard cotton baby tops from U2 and a pair of sequined Sabrina heel sandals from Max and Co. Who says shopping is unfulfilling? My credit card felt plenty filled after this weekend.

For me, Hong Kong is the ultimate romantic city. And just like everything romantic, it is best kept an arm's length away. (Up close, romance is just a blurry mess.) Which is why I love visiting the city but can never imagine actually living there. On Saturday afternoon, Ellen and I, ladened with cardboard, plastic and paper packages, finally made our way to the Peninsula Hotel, where Ellen wanted to have "tea". We situated ourselves in the super luxurious surroundings, facing the glittering diamond skyline of Hong Kong, and sipped our English tea.

Apparently I have this terrible habit of attracting unsuitable weather, so the skyline in front of us was one somewhat obscured by the beginnings of a class 3 Typhoon that was hovering in the vicinity of Macao. Despite the oil like mist that clogged everything, Hong Kong was still majestic.

Ellen started to bitch about her ex, a favorite topic since they split about half a year ago. ("Ex and the City?")

"...So I found out from one of our friends that she was basically cheating on me with every skirt in town. What a total bitch! You know the girl that I can't stand - the one that Murphy [Ellen's dog] always tries to bite?" I nodded. "Well, Natalie actually slept with her too!!" Ellen knocked a cookie off the plate with her emphatic gesturing.
We were talking about Natalie, an early twenty-something student at Berkeley that Ellen had dated, on and off for about four years.
"I don't know what you expected, you always let her walk all over you - you were completely obsessed with her."
"I couldn't help it," Ellen looked glumly into her teacup. "She's just so perfect looking."
Natalie is petite, tiny waisted, elfin. Actually, a lot like Ellen.
"So do you see her any more?"
"Unfortunately... I run into her all the time. San Francisco is unbelievably small sometimes. And what's worse is that she's already dating someone else. And she's everything I'm not - tall and big and every bit the butch."
"How about you?"
"No...," Ellen shook her head morosely, "I guess I've met some nice girls in the past half year, but no-one that I've really connected with - not the way I did with Natalie. In fact, I'm getting so depressed about the whole thing that I've actually been spending a lot of my free weekends up in Seattle visiting Brad."

When Ellen and I first met in college, she had been very seriously involved with Brad.

Ellen had been dating Brad since they were in high school together in New Jersey. Brad went off to U. Mass. for college and Ellen stayed in the tri-state area. But theirs had been and continued to be a hot and heavy romance, only stifled by the fact that Ellen's parents were both ardently Christian and ardently Korean, which meant that the mere existence of Brad in Ellen's life violated several of their 10 Commandments, including: thou shalt not have sex before marriage and thou shalt not have carnal knowledge of those not of thy race (Ellen's parents believed the Koreans to be a separate race... I'm not kidding). Needless to say, Ellen's parents never knew the full extent of Ellen and Brad's relationship. (They don't know about Ellen's sexual orientation either...)

Ellen and I were roommates my senior year. And every weekend, Brad would either visit Ellen in New York, or Ellen would be up in Massachusetts visiting Brad. They made a cute couple, a very compatible European (male)-Asian (female) relationship that mirrored a trend happening in the hip, multi-cultural mecca that is New York City.

I just knew that they would eventually get married, have 2.1 children and 1.3 pets and I coveted their relationship (especially as I flung myself into one bad relationship after another during those tumultuous college days).

Then Ellen went to Russia for a spring semester abroad ¨C which was strange because what does a computer graphics designer study in Russia? She said she wanted to spend some time at the Hermitage and she thought she could get some inspiration from Russian architecture, but the girl didn't even know how to say "thank you" in Russian.

When she came back to New York to finish her senior year, I had already graduated and moved uptown to be closer to Columbia. The first time I saw her after her semester abroad was shortly after I started dating Sebastian. I was absolutely boiling over with new love and seized by the obsessive-compulsive need to relate everything and introduce everyone to my relationship to Sebastian.

We met at a small café in Chelsea that serves a great cappuccino. Ellen was already sitting at a table when I arrived.

“Hey.” Ellen stands up and we hug each other enthusiastically. I throw my bag on a side chair and sit down in the chair facing Ellen.
“Wow. I can’t believe I haven’t seen you in like eight months,” I said. “You look great – I guess all those horror stories about Russian food aren’t true.”
Ellen is just under 5 feet tall, a perfectly petite miniature. She used to have long straight hair, the trademark of every good Asian girl. But it had been cut boyishly short in Russia, and tufts of hair stuck out from her head every which way in little waves and half-curls. Ellen shook her head merrily, her gamine hair swaying with the motion. “Oh, it’s all true. But thank god for vodka and a long summer trip through Europe.”
“So, how was Russia? I mean, I got some of your letters, but I could never really get a sense of you there, in the midst of all those burly Russian men and babushkas.”
“Oh… I had the best time. I spent most of my time in Leningrad because Moscow was totally chaotic – you would not believe the things that were happening with the fall of the Soviet Union and all. But as soon as you moved away from Moscow, it was like nothing was happening. You know – life goes on…”
“You have pictures don’t you?”
“Um hm… but not on me. You’ll have to come over to my apartment sometime so I can show you all the pictures I took. I was totally inspired by the strange juxtaposition of completely European looking cities with the bleakness of so many years under the socialist regime. It felt like a layer of grime was laying an inch thick on top of some of the most beautiful buildings I have ever seen. Anyways, I took some really great pictures.”

We talked about Russia some more, and I told Ellen about my graduation project and my summer working as a waitress. (A nightmare.) Then I sprung the big news on her.

“I met someone.” I spoke in a low voice while grinning at Ellen conspiratorially.
“No… who? When? Here?” Ellen gushed back.
“His name is Sebastian. And he is so cute. You would not believe how I met him…”
“Enlighten me.”
“Through Becca.”
“Your sister, Becca?”
I nodded my head.
“He’s not her age, is he? You cradle robber, you…”
“No,” I slap Ellen on the shoulder, “he’s her roommate’s older brother. He’s older than me.”
“Oh, right… I forgot that you have a fetish for older men.”
“Mature men, thank you very much.”
“Brad and I broke up.”

I was about to start a sentence about how well my relationship with Sebastian was going except the force of Ellen’s statement shoved the words back into my throat.

“You what??”
“I broke up… well, Brad and I mutually broke up.”
“You’ve got to be joking. Just because you spent a semester in Russia?”
“No, not exactly.”
“Then what? You guys were practically married.”
“Uh… Brad’s… um… gay?”

Ellen explained that Brad had been going through a lot of personal discovery ever since starting college and that although they were perfectly compatible spiritually – he realized that they were increasingly incompatible sexually.

“And it was sort of mutual.” Ellen concluded.
“What? You mean you didn’t enjoy the sex either?” I was shocked (and probably just a bit titillated.)
“Uh… well… I came out too.”
“You what??”

So Ellen explained the whole situation to me. How she and Brad had come to their mutually exclusive realizations at almost the same time. How the very last year of their “relationship” could have been defined as a support group of sorts. Ellen had gone to Russia to make their break a bit easier, and now that she was back, she and Brad were seeing each other almost as regularly as they had been before their split, except they were both “dating” other people at the same time.

“You know, I think there is a connection between homosexuality and Asian women.”
Now I was confused and it must have shown in my face.
“Brad says that gay men often date Asian women right before they realize their sexual orientation.”
“What? You mean that we turn men gay??”
“Noooo…,” Ellen scowled at me. “It was just an observation that both Brad and I had.”

I’ve always been intrigued by this little gem that Ellen imparted to me so many years ago. Maybe I’ll do a whole entry on it sometimes. But I’ve written enough for today and I’m going to sign off now. [next entry]

2001-06-28T02:36:00.000-07:00

Christine of heychristine.com fame started a discussion forum on her board about the intrinsic problems of trying to date in Taiwan. Although I know many of my readers have never been to Taiwan and wouldn’t understand the desert that is Taipei, I encourage all of you to go check out the discussion. If you have ever had hesitations in the past about coming (or worse, moving) here, this forum should confirm your worst nightmares. : )

Christine is hilarious though – I love checking her website periodically. I think that we should start a new game, and we can call it “Six Degrees of Christine H.” Everyone can be traced back to this girl.

***

This is a short week for me (thank God!). We had Monday off for holiday and I’m taking tomorrow off to do some “personal” stuff – you know: see the dentist, see the chiropractor, get my nose fixed (just kidding). I hate going to the dentist in Taipei but I really don’t have any other choice. Since I am working for a local company, I get the local universal health insurance. Which means that going to the dentist would cost at least $200 in the US (where I don’t have health coverage) and like $20 here. I would take money for discomfort any day.

Whenever I see a dentist’s office, I always think of those awful infomercials that they only show at 2 in the afternoon in the US when anyone who is anyone is either working, doing something meaningful, or (for those who do meaningful things at 2 in the morning) sleeping. You know the ones I’m talking about – the infomercials about correspondence schools where you can get your degree in the following fields: refrigerator and air conditioner maintenance automotive repair interior decorating paralegal blah blah blah blah. Wasn’t dentistry an option? That’s what I think of when I see the Taiwanese dentist clinics.

There must be some sort of zoning law that requires the dentists here to put their “operating rooms” right up to the store front, as though their patients were some sort of living mannequins. Although some of the dentists in the more upscale neighborhoods have learned to obscure the view into their offices through the use of striated window panes or strategically placed window decorations, the majority still offer a glorious, full color view of open mouthed patients in those execution room chairs.

***

As Suzy so subtly mentioned, yesterday was my *ahem* 31st birthday. Mandy and Julia were so completely sweet: they cooked dinner for me – an amazing paella chock full of seafood and all sorts of other goodies and I still don’t know where they scammed up the ingredients. Then we spent the entire night TV-side drinking bad red wine and watching a tape of old Will and Grace episodes that one of Julia’s brothers had made and sent to us a month or so ago. I loveWill and Grace… let’s just say that the idea of being a “fag hag” resonates.

Every New York woman in the arts (and many not in the arts) has played the fag hag at one time or another. It’s inevitable. There are just so many beautiful men in the New York art scene and the odds that they are straight? Like the odds of winning the lottery. The bane of my straight existence was Daniel. Daniel is very likely the most beautiful thing I have ever laid eyes upon in this world. He’s at least six foot four, long and lean, toned like an Olympic athlete, and more chiseled and perfect than Rupert Everet (and Rupert Everet is damned chiseled and perfect) with an aquiline nose and piercing green eyes. I met Daniel through a guy I briefly dated my sophomore year in college.

Daniel was studying architecture at the Yale School of Architecture but he usually spent his weekends in the City, where his family had an apartment. As the sophomoric co-ed, I found that incredibly urbane of him. For some reason, he would frequently turn up at the apartment my “boyfriend” shared with three other Parsons students.

The first time I saw Daniel, my heart leapt into my throat. Imagine Titania’s joy when she awoken, her eyes charmed by the pansy’s enchanted nectar, and set her eyes upon the donkey headed Nick Bottom. That’s how I felt when Daniel walked into the cluttered bachelors’ apartment. His very presence seemed to elevate the squalor of the apartment into something sublime.

I felt vaguely guilty about the intensity of my lust – I was, after all, dating Daniel’s friend: but a sophomore is a fickle thing.

I kept blushing that entire night, doing all the little things that women do when they are interested in someone but trying not to be too obvious about it: I laughed whenever Daniel told a joke, leaned toward him when he was talking, looking completely absorbed, brushed up against him “accidentally”, giggled constantly while twirling my hair self-consciously around my fingers. If the me of today was in the same room as the me of that night, I would slap myself.

Daniel and I turned out to have a lot more in common than I had with my boyfriend. We liked the same movies, we liked the same writers, we had similar political leanings. By the end of that evening, buzzing with one too many fuzzy navels, I was sure that I had found my soul mate. The next day, I had the talk with my boyfriend.

“Umm.. X [I’m keeping his name out of this – no point opening old wounds]… I’ve been having a great time these last few weeks.”
“Yea, me too. I’ve never known anyone quite like you, Jody. And it’s not just the,” he suddenly lowered his voice, “you know… I just have a really good time when I’m hanging out with you.”
“Yea… Me too.” Ok. The conversation was not going the way I had wanted.
“You know, Daniel said that you’re really sharp. He was totally impressed that you know so much about the architecture in New York.”
I perked up, “Really? When did you talk to him?”
“Oh, we were just talking at some point last night.”
“He’s a nice guy… Daniel.” I said his name reverentially, though X didn’t notice.
“Yea… though I don’t understand why he keeps hanging around with me now that we’ve cleared the air.”
I was confused. “What do you mean?”
“Well, Daniel has a crush on me. It’s pretty obvious, don’t you think?”
Now I was really confused. “How can Daniel have a crush on you??? You’re a guy.”
X looked at me meaningfully. Then the light bulb clicked on.

It turned out that Daniel had met X at a notoriously gay bar in the East Village. X was there with one of his gay friends but X was the one who was being hit on. X is actually extraordinarily gracious about being a gay magnet (you know, a straight guy that attracts gay guys). I suppose it’s partially influenced by the fact that he has never had too much trouble attracting straight women either.

So Daniel and I had a lot more in common than I had thought.

I didn’t get around to breaking up with X that day. Actually, after the disappointment of the day, I ended up dating X for another month. During which time, Daniel and I got to be quite friendly. When I finally ended things with X (no, he was not devastated), Daniel actually confessed to me that he was glad.

“You know, the first time I met you, I was completely crushed.” Daniel said as we were waiting in line at a local deli.
“Why?” I said distractedly, while digging in my wallet for stray change.
“Because… it was really strange for me to see X acting… well, like your boyfriend.”
“That’s what he was.”
“I know, but I guess part of me was hoping that X wasn’t really straight, and I wasn’t prepared to see him with a woman.”
I laughed at the irony of my own secret crush.
“Well, at least you won’t have to deal with that anymore.”

In all the subsequent years that I lived in New York, Daniel and I stayed very close friends. And although he was more than willing (mostly because he thought it would be kitschy), I never actually had the need to call on Daniel to act as my date to some dreary wedding or other social function. We had a relationship based on mutual respect. He never questioned my fascination with thin, aesthete, well-dressed, disproportionately Asian men, and I never questioned his fascination with thin, aesthete, well-dressed, disproportionately Asian men.

Daniel hates the fact that I’ve moved so far away and that he can’t call me to whine about the latest debacle in the ever revolving door of his love life. Fortunately, he is probably also not reading this journal, so he won’t know that I just called his love life a revolving door. He hates the internet and is a complete www klutz.

Sometimes I wonder what my life might be like if Daniel was straight, but then I realize that he would most likely be married to some stick-figure model and I would still be me, in Taiwan. Then I’m glad that he’s the fag to my hag. There is some disturbing satisfaction in knowing that if I can’t have him, at least no other woman in the world can either….

Ok. So I’m a bitch. So sue me. [next entry]

2001-06-26T04:02:00.000-07:00

hmm… Looks like Suzy’s already back on the site. (Hi Suz. Notice that although I can edit your entries, you cannot edit mine. : p )

Dinner on Sunday with Mike was an unequivocal disaster. Why? Because the nincompoop brought Jack to dinner with him. What is it with men? Every sitcom known to man does at least one joke playing off the stereotype that women travel to bathrooms in groups rather than singularly. But I’ve recently noticed that men do everything in posses. Especially when attending social events. And there’s no reason behind it. Women need each other (1) to help hold handbags, (2) to share make-up, (3) for mutual affirmations. What do men need each other for? According to the Darwinian survival of the fittest theory, doesn’t excess men equal excess competition?

So I opened the door on Sunday, looking my post-vomit, pale yellow best, in a wrinkled fatigue print tank top and a pair of capri jeans, and found myself staring straight into a pair of devastating blue-grey eyes.

I blushed. And I don’t blush.

“Hi Jody.”
“Uh… Hi Jack.” I stepped aside to let him in. “Where’s Mike?”
“He’s parking his motorcycle. There weren’t any spaces in front of your building, so he dropped me off first.”
“Oh.”

Unfortunately, neither of my housemates was in that night, so I had to content myself with uncomfortable silence while Jack took off his shoes and sat down in the living room couch.

“Do you want something to drink?” I hovered near the doorway to the kitchen.
“No, thanks.”
“Oh.”

I sat down in the armchair to the side of Jack and I think we spent several moments looking thoughtfully into space. (The theory of relativity was probably stumbled upon in a similar thoughtful moment half a decade ago.)

“I’ve never been to your apartment before. It’s really nice.”
“Thanks. We spent a lot of time working on it.” Which is true. Mandy, Julia and I had spent a few weeks painting the entire apartment: the living room/ dining room is a cheerful sunflower yellow, and each of the rooms a different shade of light jewel tone (my room is a really light aqua-blue). We had supplemented the classic furniture that the landlord had provided with more eclectic, personality filled pieces that we had bought, begged from others, stolen (just kidding) and made. The walls were decorated with pieces of art that we collected from our travels, and there were a few pieces of my sculptures hidden towards the back of the apartment.
“Who do you live with?”
“Mandy and Julia. Don’t you know them? When Mike lived in Taiwan, we used to hang out together all the time.” I pointed at a picture of the three of us on the coffee table.
Jack squinted at the picture, “No… I don’t recognize them.” He picked up the picture. “You look really pretty in this picture.”
I blushed again. I really don’t want this to become habit. (Certain) Men do seem to have this obnoxious effect on me though. “Uh... What’s taking Mike so long?” I stammer.
“I don’t know… Mike told me you were sick yesterday?”
“Yea. I had some bad zhong zi. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to look at those things again without feeling ill.”
Jack laughed. He has a nice laugh, deep and rich, like chocolate. My toes tingled just from hearing his laugh. But then the twinkle in his eyes turned serious. “Look, Jody, I really wanted to ask you something about that night at Kiss…”
Just then the buzzer to my front door rang.

I literally hurled myself across the room to push the buzzer. I flung a rush of words through the telecom, “Mike? Hey, just stay down there. We’re coming out.”

By the time I finished my sentence, Jack had already gotten up off the couch.

The three of us walked down to Ho Ping, to a near by all-you-can-eat hot-pot restaurant that Mike had been to before. On the way there, I tugged on Mike’s shirt a bit, and we let Jack walk ahead a few steps. I hissed at Mike, “What took you so long? Where did you park? Tibet?”
“No,” he hissed back, “ I parked at that spa that’s right by your house, and the cutest girl was walking out when I was parking. She was still wet from her shower – I’m guessing – and you know what a sucker I am for a girl just out of the shower.” He smiled lecherously.
I slugged him on the biceps.
“Ow.” He rubbed his bruised arm with his other hand. “What the hell was that for?”
“Why’d you bring Jack?” I asked. “I thought you guys were fighting or something...”
“Nah… That was just that weird weekend. He’s been fine these last two weeks.”
“Well, that’s nice to know. Still, you could have given me a bit of advanced warning.”
“Why?”
I didn’t really have an answer to that question. I couldn’t really tell Mike that I was upset because I had snogged his friend at Kiss and now was too embarrassed to face him… could I?

Dinner was incredibly uncomfortable for me. At least Mike and Jack chatted the entire time and didn’t seem to notice (or care about) the lack of participation from my corner. I was feeling just this side of green the entire time, but I can’t honestly say that it was due to the food and not to my proximity to Jack.

I did eat. And everything tasted like watery cardboard. But it appeased my cavernous stomach somewhat and I left feeling more human than I had in the previous 24 hours.

Somehow, we ended up back at my apartment after dinner. I have a strange, built-in instinct to play hostess when given the opportunity. (Think of it as the equivalent of a bird’s instinct to nest.) Even when I am with people I don’t particularly like or know, I always end up inviting them up to my apartment for coffee if we are in the vicinity. I wonder if this is a phenomenon unique to the Chinese, since I notice many of my family and Chinese/ Chinese-American friends afflicted with the same impulse. The only difference I’ve noticed in Taiwan is – due of the highly congested housing situation here - many of my Taiwanese friends invite me to take a ride in their all options taken, top of the line cars instead of having dinner at their homes.

I am a fiend for coffee and there is a special brand from Philadelphia that I am very particular to. Whenever I have friends or family coming to Taiwan from the East Coast, I beg them to bring me at least one pack of this brand, which they can order by phone. Right now, I have four and a half bags chilling in the freezer. This is the one thing I do not share with my roommates (well, this and men). They know that they are not to use my coffee unless I’ve made up a pot myself, which they are then free to help themselves to. I love this stuff.

As I am grinding the coffee beans in the kitchen, Mike is leaning against the doorframe. I vaguely register that Jack is in the living room, flipping through the TV channels.

“What’s up?” Mike asks.
“Nothing. Why?”
“Well, you were totally mute during dinner, and that little conversation we had on the way to dinner wasn’t exactly normal. Are you pissed at Jack or something?”
“Shh…” I glance at the door, but it was unlikely that Jack could hear the conversation above the noises of the coffee grinder and the television. “No, it’s nothing like that… I’m just… still feeling a bit weak from the food poisoning, and I wasn’t in the mood for a lot of guests.”
“Hey, we can leave if you want us to.”
“No, no, no… I just wasn’t… prepared. I’m fine now. Really. The food helped.”

When the coffee was brewing, I brought a plate of lichees out into the living room. Lichees are finally in season – they are these wonderfully meaty and juicy fruits that are about the size and shape of jawbreakers, covered by a reddish-brown, scaly peel.

At first, the conversation was better – I tried to participate as much as I could, telling Mike and Jack about my trip to Japan and Nathan’s antics. Then I leaned back into the sofa and listened to Mike talk about a professor he had met who was turning into the co-worker from hell. Apparently, this professor had taken a bit of a liking to Mike, and was showing it by flooding Mike with requests to appear at various academic conferences (on topics Mike had no interest in) and suggestions for potential co-authored papers (on topics Mike had interest in but no time for).

After the coffee was served and drunk, Mike got up to use the restroom. Leaving me sitting next to Jack on the couch, with no foil to our shared discomfort.

And Jack did something totally unexpected. He reached across the space between us and took my hand in his. His grasp was firm and warm. He rubbed the back of my hand gently with his thumb.

Confusion flooded my heart, beating alternately with joy and anger.

I pulled away a moment too late. I knew that I had given away too much. Suggested too much with my hesitancy.

“What’s wrong with you?” I said in a lowered voice that struggled for nonchalance. I looked straight into his devastating blue-grey eyes. “Why are you doing this?”
“I.. I…” Shit, I thought. His eyes actually looked sad. I wasn’t prepared for melancholy.
“I just don’t know what you want from me.” I said very slowly, enunciating each syllable, as if the words might escape if not tracked carefully.

Mike of perfect timing chose this moment to open the bathroom door. I wasn’t going to get my answer that night.

They left almost immediately afterwards and I went to bed, exhausted from the battles I had waged that day against my stomach and myself. Next time I get food poisoning, I’m definitely not going to be infatuated with anyone. [next entry]

2001-06-25T20:16:00.000-07:00

Hey... Is this thing working?

Hi everyone! It's really late here in Portland, so I thought I would just take this baby out for a test run. Wheee! Also, I'd like to remind everyone that Jody's birthday is in two days - June 27th! So don't forget to drop her a line wishing her a happy birthday. And rub it in that she's now yet another year away from her 20s.

2001-06-24T09:01:00.000-07:00

I've been feeling awful for the past 12 hours - sick as a dog. Wouldn't you know it? The long weekend after a great vacation, and I get food poisoned as soon as I set foot into Taipei.

This is the weekend of the Dragon Boat Festival in Taiwan. Unfortunately, I have absolutely no idea what this means. All I know is that lots of people gather on the Keelung River to paddle some boats from one end to the other while beating on drums; and all my relatives start dropping by my apartment and giving me zhong zi, these funny, puffy tetrahedron shaped delicacies that are the culinary specialties for this festival.

Since I haven't been in Taipei all week, I arrived home to a refrigerator full of zhong zi. Some were delivered to our house courtesy of my relatives down south (I have an uncle and aunt who live in Kaohsiung); others were brought home from work by Mandy and Julia.

I personally am not a huge fan of the zhong zi although the first time I had one, I was intrigued by its distinctive shape and odd-looking leafy exterior (zhong zi are wrapped in large bamboo leaves). Zhong zi could have been perfect culinary version of the Christmas present. As a child, I would struggle with the tough, white rope that held the zhong zi in shape and kept them tied them together in bunches. Once the ropes were dislodged, I would then peel away the sticky leaves. Imagine my disappointment when, instead of a toy surprise inside, I would only find steamed sticky rice wrapped around a yolk of salty meats or sweet red beans.

The Chinese did a grave injustice with the zhong zi. They should have followed the Cracker Jack or Kinder Surprise model. Imagine where the Chinese would be if only they had had their own version of the "toy surprise inside".

Yesterday, hungry for a mid-afternoon snack, I scavenged through the house and found only zhong zi. So I had a salty one. And I haven't eaten since. Four hours after the zhong zi, I was praying to the porcelain God. Five hours after the zhong zi, I was a fanatic disciple of the porcelain God, wailing at the sight of Him. I hate throwing up. I swear I could never be bulimic because I so dislike the feeling of losing my lunch.

Last night, Mandy and Julia threw out the remaining zhong zi still in the refrigerator.

***

I guess I should spend a paragraph or so explaining the rather *cough* pornographic nature of my site last week. One of my best friends from my childhood, Suzy, encouraged me to start this blog a few month ago, when she was here on business, so that she could "live" in Taipei vicariously through me (she lived in Taipei for 2 years herself many, many years ago and has been "living in the past" ever since she left - yes, she is a sad, sad person). Suzy lives in Portland, Maine, but she does come to Taiwan quite often -sometimes for business but more often on her own free time for pleasure.

I gave her my username and password before I went to Japan because I figured if I wasn't going to be able to post on my blog for a week, someone should in my stead, to give my readers something to mull over while I was away. Plus, Suzy and I know a lot of the same people, many of whom are occasional visitors to this site. I thought it would be fun for our friends to read about Suzy's life for a while. (Suzy actually had a blog of her own, but was too lazy to keep it up and stopped after maybe a month.)

I thought Suzy would write about her (exciting) life in Maine or maybe some insights about Taipei Now through the eyes of a one-time resident.

Instead, she bastardized an entry I had already written about the farewell party at Roxy 99 and turned my blog into the "Smut Pages".

So I kicked her out (or rather, I changed the password on her). Out, out, damn spot! Out I say.

In truth, Suzy has been a long time fan of soft-porn, erotic fiction and I've known this as long as I've known Suzy. Even in Elementary School her favorite author was Judy Blume. Her bookshelves read like the who's who of Harlequin romances (like I said, she is a sad, sad person...).

Anyways, I decided to give her co-blog privileges, so that although she can continue to "contribute" to my blog, she can no longer "edit" my entries. Let's see if Suzy has anything constructive to add to my blog in the future. : )

***

Late this morning, after a fitful night of tossing and turning and feeling rightfully green around the edges, I got a call from Mike. I haven't seen Mike for weeks, and with all the excitement of the past two weeks, both professionally and personally, I have actually managed to distance myself somewhat from the whole Jack fiasco.

"Hi Jody. It's Mike. What's up?
"Sick as a dog, retching every few hours. You know, the usual..."
"Shit, what happened?"
"I think I got food poisoned from eating some zhong zi. Those things are deadly."
"I'm sorry. I hope you get over it soon. Is that why I haven't been able to reach you for the last few days?"
"No... I went to Japan last week - I told you that, didn't I?"
"Oh... umm... I guess so."
"How's your week been?"
"Uh... not bad I guess. I feel like I'm getting too old for Taiwan." (That's a new one.)
"Is something wrong?"
"No... I mean, not really. I've been meeting and talking to some of the Professors at Tai-Da [National Taiwan University] and Ming Chuen University, so I've been getting a lot of work done. But I haven't been out since we went to Kiss - I just haven't wanted to go out."
"Ok... and what do you want me to do about it?"
"Save me!!"

I started chuckling. Mike is the last person I know who needs saving. If he needs saving: I feel sorry for the poor women Mike "rescues" on a weekly basis.

"Poor baby," I say in my best poor baby voice. "What can Jody do to help you?"
"You can come to TU with me tonight."

TU is a dank, dark dance hall that has been a long time popular hangout with the young foreign crowd because you can get in without paying the cover charge (NT$500) if you have one of their ubiquitous VIP cards. TU is one of my least favorite places in Taipei, but one of Mike's standbys. I find TU morbidly depressing: every time I've gone (I go maybe once a year, dragged by one desperate friend or another), I see the same people there as were there last year, and the year before that, and so on, and so forth.

TU also has a reputation for being a good place (for a man) to go to get an easy lay.

"Look Mike," I begin. "I want to help you, really I do - but there's no way I'm going near a disco in my condition."
"Maybe you'll feel better by tonight?" Mike said hopefully.
"And maybe the woman of your dreams will fall out of the sky and into your lap."
"Really?"

We both start laughing.

"How about dinner then?" Mike finally offered.
"Well, I'll probably be able to eat something by dinner tonight. As long as it's not anything spicy or too greasy."
"Which basically eliminates all Chinese food."
"How about shabu-shabu?" I suggest. Shabu-shabu is the Japanese word for hot pot, Asian style. In this non-cuisine, you pay money to a restaurant so they can give you a pot full of boiling water, give you some slabs of raw meat and handfuls of raw vegetable and let you boil the food yourself. It's always been disturbing to me how prolifically popular these hot-pot places have become in the past few years, but when you're as sick as I was, broiled foods sound pretty good... and safe.
"Ok... How about I come over to your place around 7?"
"Um... I think that's ok, but call me before you head over, ok?"
"Yeah, talk to you then."
"Bye." [next entry]

2001-06-23T02:22:00.000-07:00

Well, I'm back from my "vacation" in Tokyo, just in time for the dragon boat festival and the typhoon headed our way.

I had a wonderful time in Japan. I stayed with a good friend of mine from Parsons, Nathan Hsu. He finally married his long-time Japanese girlfriend, Reiko, on Thursday in, of all places, Disneyland Tokyo. In the great tradition of being a non-traditionalist, Nathan went camp for the "most important day of his life". I'm just happy that he's found someone who can stomach his particular brand of humour. I sure can't. At least not in closed quarters or for long periods of time.

The wedding was a pretty last minute affair for Nathan. We were chatting on the phone about a month ago, since Nathan had a particular interesting project he was working on and wanted another artist's opinion. After we talked about his work, my work, new and old gossip and I was almost ready to hang up, he casually drawled into the phone:

"Oh yeah, Reiko and I are getting married next month. On the 21st of June. I'll send you an email. You can come, can't you?"

And he did send me an email. At least it contained a Flash attachment showing two particularly comical animated caricatures of Reiko and himself all decked out in Japanese matrimonial garb singing an invitation tune (undoubtedly penned by the inimitable Nathan himself) set to the song "If I Had a Million Dollars".

The wedding was mostly for the sake of Reiko's mother. When Reiko moved back to Japan and was very blatantly co-habitating with Nathan (Reiko had been in LA doing graduate work in sociology - and meeting Nathan), Reiko's mother turned into the epitome of the nightmarish mother-in-law (to be). For some men, that might be enough to push them out of any intentions of matrimony: for Nathan, it was a tantalizing challenge. He was constantly working around ways to tease Mom into extreme levels of annoyance and then using a combination of charm and threat (of leaving Reiko, of not including Mom in the wedding plans, he came up with threats both ingenious and loony) to disarm her and make him son-in-law number one again. The truth is, by the time the wedding rolled around, Reiko's mom was so confused and tired of trying to figure Nathan out that she had thrown her white flag up, along with her blue, pink, and yellow flags.

Nathan is a real strange character.

Two nights before the wedding, Nathan's Japanese buddy and co-worker Brian threw a bachelor party for him. Since I was the only friend of Nathan's that had come from abroad, I was duly invited to join. We started the night by going to a high-class strip joint somewhere in the middle of Tokyo that runs a show from something like 10am to 2am every day. A non-stop naked women revue.

The place was incredible: it was a smallish amphitheater with a front stage and then a central runway like stage that ran through the middle of the room. Red felted seats were set in rows, emulating a movie theatre or an opera hall, except all the rows were tilted at 45 degrees to the runway (for your viewing pleasure, I suppose). The room was dark when we walked in, since the show runs continually, and people pay a one-time charge to enter. (Once you leave, you're out unless you re-pay the fee.) The seats closest to the runway and stage were all occupied, filled with men slouched deep down in the seats, eyes glued on center stage or the runway, their beers in one hand and god knows what in the other.

The girls come on stage at intervals, either strutting on stage or sitting on these robotic circular platforms that both rotate and move up and down the runway. The platforms are particularly intriguing. By the time the girls are naked, it becomes patently obvious where their benefits lie. Never before have I seen girls served up in quite the "360 degrees" way. It's like the IMAX of strip clubs.

The girls start clothed in a myriad of costumes, some right out of bad porn movies: all fringes, rhinestones, and silly pasties. Others are dressed more along the line of soft fetish (maids and nuns) or Buffy the vampire slayer (the goth look). But let's face it, it's not the costumes that matter - I doubt the tiny pieces of cloth even register a bleep in the minds of the men at that fine establishment.

The girls work meticulously, by rote, removing each piece of clothing with precision, working from top down. I can only imagine what's going on in their minds: "left glove, swivel hip, right glove, wiggle ass, bra strap, shake hair, unclasp, wink eyes..." When they are fully unclothed, they start writhing: those not on the platforms snaking around the dance poles on the front stage, and those on the platforms leaning back on their elbows and spreading their legs up in the air in wide open "v"s or down on all fours, their asses pushed high and their breasts dangling low. I note with envy the remarkable flexibility of these dancing bodies, as one woman literally does a backward bridge, feet planted about a foot apart, exposing her beautifully trimmed crotch to the fascinated audience.

Here's a thought - who's the genius who came up with the idea of the dance pole? Who is the guy who thought, "gee, wouldn't it be cool to see some naked woman brushing her body or wrapping her legs around a metal pole?"

After that impressive cultural experience, we went to Roppongi, to Nathan's favorite bar, where each of his well-wishers bought him a round of Long Island Ice Tea (the deadliest drink known to man). Nathan's one of the lucky ones. He is not cursed with the Asian disease (the way I am) - not only can he hold his liquor quite well, he doesn't turn beet red when the alcohol makes its way through his system. I, on the other hand, turn velveteen crimson (flame on!) when I so much as sniff a whiff of alcohol.

At two in the morning, we were all happily plastered.

By three, we were deliriously plastered.

Nathan, Brian and I left the bar at around three-thirty, leaving behind just two stragglers from the bachelor party who looked like they were getting lucky that night. As we tripped dizzily down the deserted thoroughfare of Roppongi (remember, it was Tuesday), Nathan was obviously struck by a bad case of the munchies. How do I know? I think the fact that he was screaming at the top of his voice, "SHIT, I'M STARVING" in broken record repetitiveness had something to do with the depth of my insight.

Luckily, there was a man selling roasted chicken from a cart on the street.

We split up, Brian heading one direction home and Nathan and I heading to Nathan's apartment (I was staying with Nathan even though he was getting married in two days - that's the kind of person Nathan is). And as we made our way noisily into the apartment (Reiko had obviously been asleep for quite some time by then), Nathan started lurching toward the kitchen, his chicken clutched possessively to his chest, yelling with all of his remaining vigour, "HONEY?? HONEY?? I'M HOME!! HONEY?? I CAUGHT US A CHICKEN." Reiko chose not to acknowledge his Neanderthal feat and Nathan set to devouring the chicken himself.

***

The wedding itself was held in the Disney Ambassador Hotel, a surprising ritzy hotel-slash-resort on the outskirts of Disneyland. Since Nathan was raised Buddhist and Reiko was raised atheist, they naturally settled for a Catholic Priest to consecrate the marriage. The wedding was simple. A Japanese woman sang a simple rendition of "Ave Maria" while the bride walked down the aisle. The Priest performed the ceremony in Japanese and English, then the married couple walked back out the chapel.

The only unconventional part of the entire ceremony was Nathan. He wore this fun house suit that he had designed at work.

Nathan has been working for fashion designer Yohji Yamamato for the last two years, which is weird because (1) Nathan is Chinese and didn't understand a lick of Japanese when he arrived in Tokyo (his Japanese has improved significantly in the past two years) and (2) Nathan studied industrial design at Parsons. But it turned out that he had an uncanny knack for designing clothes. He could take the most unassuming pieces of fabrics and turn them into works of art. Nathan actually seems to sculpt with fabric the way I sculpt with clay or metal.

Nathan worked in L.A. before coming to Tokyo, doing freelance design work for an in-line skate and skateboard company. As X-treme sports got increasingly popular, the company decided to expand into a line of sportswear. Somehow, Nathan got roped into being an interim designer on that project. He designed some odd, asymmetrical, neurotic looking shirts and bottoms for his first attempts. They didn't fit well and the components he chose ended up costing a small fortune, but they made enough of a splash among some skateboarders that he was allowed to continue designing for another season, and then another. He improved with each season, gradually learning to choose the right fabrics to achieve the drape he wanted, learning how to cut and fold and gather. But his style continued to get more eclectic, veering sometimes into the realm of the completely impractical and esoteric until the things he designed could no longer be realistically offered as street wear by his company. He left the company and started selling independent labeled pieces to interested buyers in L.A.

An assistant designer from Comme des Garcon saw some of his pieces in a small, out of the way boutique in L.A. She brought it back to Japan, and showed it to some of the other designers. Then one of those designers jumped ship and went to work for Yohji Yamamoto as the head designer of a new sideline of men's ready-to-wear. He decided to recruit Nathan to be on his design team.

Nathan was easily persuaded, since Reiko had already finished her Master's and was hanging around L.A., taking the odd PhD level class, just to be with him. She was having a difficult time finding a job, and was starting to feel homesick for Japan.

The suit he designed for his wedding was cut to almost resemble a man's wedding kimono in shape, except there was a western lapel and no obi sash. The fabric was a lightweight wool with a harlequin diamond check pattern in black and white. He wore a purple Yohji Yamamoto ready-to-wear shirt underneath to complete the picture. He was a startling contrast to his bride, dressed in a form fitting but otherwise altogether conventional wedding gown.

***

After the ceremony, we were directed into a banquet hall for the reception. As we shuffled out of the chapel, we could see, in the (not-so) distance, another group of Japanese, spearheaded by an efficient wedding director (the wedding directors in this hotel - including our own - are easily identified by their unique markings: head to toe lilac, topped by a lilac 1950s pill box hat) beginning the charge into the now vacated chapel.

The reception had all the little touches: lavish rose centerpieces, full Western place setting, four tiered wedding cake, small wedding tokens at each seat, the wedding party table front and center, Micky and Minnie Mouse. (In the movies, the score to this scene would screech to a record scratching halt.) Yes, Nathan bought the "Fantasy Package" (or the "Tinkerbell Package" or something odd like that). And yes, Micky and Minnie, dressed in their Sunday best (no bare mouse bottoms here), were swinging by to congratulate the lucky couple. I think Snow White was stuck in a prior engagement.

The reception itself had all the requisite bad jokes, reasonable but overpriced food, and token embarrassing moment for the newlyweds. The best part of the evening was a short tape that Brian, the best man, had made just before Nathan and Reiko walked to the chapel. He was behind the camera, focusing on the beaming couple, questioning them about their pre-wedding jitters and their impending vows. He ended the Q&A with this question, asked with his best announcer's voice, the mike held out front:

"Now that you're about to get married, what are you doing next?"
Reiko and Nathan looked at each other, and answered in perfect unison, "We're going to DISNEYLAND."

I stayed until the bitter end, and found my own way back to Nathan's apartment. Nathan and Reiko were staying at the hotel for their honeymoon night and spending the following day at Disneyland (they weren't kidding.) As I write this Blog entry, they should be in Bali, enjoying their "real" honeymoon. (If you guys are reading this somehow: I'm soooooo jealous!!!)

***

My next foray out of the country will be to Hong Kong, sometime in July, for work. I will try to get online more often next time because I was having a serious case of withdrawal this time.

The Oriented Rants and Raves Forum has been shut down temporarily by the administrators, which was probably inevitable (though I feel impossibly bereft). The postings have gotten increasingly belligerent and often downright nasty. On the bright side, Raymond wrote an incredibly nice posting about me on the "love my hair, hate my site" thread before Rants and Raves was shut down. For which he deserves my public groveling and gratitude (I'm not worthy).

I'm so glad to be back in Taipei. Home sweet home. (Though from my roommates' reactions [or lack thereof] - you'd think I'd never been away.) [next entry]

2001-06-20T00:41:00.000-07:00

I'm checking in from my vacation destination (Tokyo -- yeah, I know, thrilling isn't it? But I'm attending a friend's wedding so I have to suck it up) to see what my mad pornographer friend has come up with. And this is what I have to say - she's now banned from this blog.

Check her out in the previous entry if you're so inclined, but sorry, that's all folks! (Unless, for some reason, I get a barrage of mail from people who think it should be otherwise - I might team blog if I get enough positive response.) If I ever decide to write my own version of "Sex and the City" (which, by the way, this is not) - I think there would be a whole lot less "sex" and a whole lot more "city". (And for those of my readers who just groaned... tough, this is not a XXX-rated site, thank you.)

2001-06-18T00:37:00.000-07:00

Yeah, I know… I haven’t posted anything in a few days. I don’t have good internet access over the weekends. So sue me.

***

Well, I did it. I got my raise (yea!).

I had my performance review with Phil on Friday afternoon. First, he pulled out my goal-setting document from last year and we reviewed my goals. For each goal set, I pulled out a sample of the work I had done this past year from my portfolio and we discussed how I had either failed, met, or exceeded expectations. Everything was copasetic. Then we did goal setting for the coming year.

At the end of the review portion, we had the following conversation (in Chinese):

“So where do you see yourself in a year or two?”
“I’m not sure. I guess I don’t see myself continuing forever doing product modeling. Especially as more and more things move onto the computer, there are fewer clients that require tactile models.”
“There’s nothing we can do about that, eh?”
“No…”
“Have you ever considered becoming an accounts manager?” Phil prodded, looking at me intently.
“Well, not really. I am worried that I would become less involved in the design side of the business.”
Phil nodded his head in understanding, though it was patently obvious that he understood not one iota.
“How long have you been here now, Jody? Two years?”
“Almost two and a half,” I reply.
“It’s certainly time we give you more responsibility. If you don’t want to be an accounts manager – how would you feel about managing the graphics designers?”
“That would be great. But I’m not trained in graphic design. Won’t that be a problem?”
“Nah, I don’t think so. I think you have a good eye, and a good sense of business. And this is the part of the company I think will grow. Of course, you’ll get an increase in salary: let’s say NT$12,000 a month more?”
I was floored. I was thinking of asking for 5k, maybe 10k tops.
Phil continued, “of course, none of this will take effect until August. I’m going to reorganize the office somewhat and change the reporting structure.”
I nodded.
“Ok. Well, that’s that. You’ve done good work this year, Jody. Keep it up.”

Before I was even out the door, the extra money I was going to bank was already spent. A new laptop computer (my desktop is so old – it’s held together by duct tape – and the monitor screeches disconcertingly whenever it is turned on), a DVD player, and of course, that cute dress at Isabelle Wen’s that I had been thinking about for the past week. Such is the mind of this empty-brained, consumption-driven girl.

***

The truth is, I don’t see myself at Conceptual Designs for any longer than another year or two. At some point, I would like to strike it out on my own – go back to doing art for art’s sake or somehow translate some of my sculptures into something more “marketable”. But I do like the people in my office, which is part of the reason that I’ve been at this company as long as I have.

Two of my favorite co-workers are Xiao Chen (Little Chen) and Lao Yeh (Old Yeh). They are two fifty-something plant “designers” that work with the landscape artists. They have been with Phil for as long as the company has been around, and Phil still consults them whenever any truly important project comes around. To me, they are the grumpy old men of Taipei – a Chinese Laurel and Hardy. Xiao Chen is short, about my height, as wide as he is tall. He has a full head of dark and bushy hair, which I’m sure he dyes to its sleek blackness. Lao Yeh is reedy thin and several heads taller than Xiao Chen. He is mostly bald and what hair he has, fine and grey, forms a little laurel crown around his head.

Every day, after lunch and “hsiu hsi” (afternoon siesta), Xiao Chen and Lao Yeh congregate at our little office kitchenette with any co-worker that wants to join them for a spot of afternoon tea. They brew a large pot of Taiwanese tea, and then sit around gossiping and griping for a good half hour. Sometimes the topic of the day revolves around office politics or client gossip; sometimes they talk politics, or discuss the stock market (like all good Taiwanese, both Xiao Chen and Lao Yeh are avid traders on the Taiwan Stock Exchange).

Most recently, the talk has revolved around the lone orchid plant that sits on the windowsill of the kitchenette.

I’m not sure who brings the plant in, but apparently, every year, around this time of the year, one of them brings a young orchid plant in and sits it on the windowsill in the kitchenette. Orchids are very popular in Asia – not only do they thrive in the climate, they also appeal to two contradictory Asian aesthetics by being both sparse and opulent at the same time – two or three large, tongue-like leaves at the base, a long thin stem, anchored to a man made support, and at the end of the stem, several buds that bloom into delicate pink-yellow or white-yellow flowers. For a month, Xiao Chen and Lao Yeh tend to that plant, as if it was their most prized possession. And everyday, they debate how many blooms the orchid will have, using detailed analyses that are vaguely scientific, vaguely time honoured superstitious. And everyday, each would pressure the other to yield to his prediction, though, as far as I know, this has gone on for as many years as the firm has been around and neither one has yielded yet. This year, Xiao Chen said the plant would yield seven blooms and Lao Yeh countered with ten.

Yesterday was payday, since the flowering season has come and gone. Xiao Chen won the NT$1000 bet.

For as every good Taiwanese knows his orchids, every good Taiwanese will also be willing to place a wager where his mouth is.

***

Saturday night, I went to Roxy 99 for the first time since it opened. It was absolutely packed. The clientele was almost perfectly split: half non-Asian and half Asian. And as always, the gender distribution was unusually skewed: most of the non-Asians were male, and most of the Asians were female.

So the good people on Oriented have asked me to include some good old “sex in the city” into this city. Since I’m not personally getting any – I guess I’ll have to ask my good friend, a Taipei resident sex expert, to share with us a story from this weekend. I’m going on a short vacation, so I’ll ask her to take over for the next few days…

***

“Lola” walked into Roxy 99, self-consciously running her hands down the side of her pants, as if using her tactile senses to check her appearance. She was wearing a light green sleeveless top with a modest square neckline in front but with a large pie shaped wedge cut out of the back, running from her waist up to the small between her shoulder blades. She was obviously not wearing a bra underneath, and her hard nipples were vaguely visible under the thin cotton top. Her longish legs (at 5’6”, she was moderately taller than the average Taiwanese woman) were dressed up in a pair of tight hip-huggers that emphasized her narrow hips and her narrower waist.

I saw Lola as soon as she walked into the bar, and waved her over to join us at the “table” near the back. I was at Roxy 99 for Paul H’s going away party. Paul, an avid student of Chinese and an even more avid student of Chinese women, is leaving Taiwan (after 3+ years) to return to the States to get his Master’s Degree in International Studies. Lola walked over and the eyes of all the men at my table (3 foreign and 2 Chinese) did an appreciative little dance. I let Paul introduce Lola to his friends, since I only have a passing acquaintance to most of them, and they parted, as the seas parted for Moses, to magnanimously give Lola a seat at the center.

Lola smiled flirtatiously at the men at the table as they all struggled to look nonchalant while competing to be the one to pour her a glass of beer. Lola has a very classic Chinese look. Small, slanted eyes, small button nose, and perfectly long glossy black hair that falls unrestrained down her back. She has always played up her Chinese-ness, lining her eyes to make her eyes slant more pronounced, refusing to tint her hair, as if she subconsciously knows that it is what attracts men to her.

I met Lola back when she was dating another friend of mine, and although they have subsequently broken up, Lola still keeps in touch with me. I’m not sure why. Lola is a senior at Wen Hua University up in the hills near Shi Lin, studying linguistics. She was born and raised in I-lan, and her family still lives there. Her English has improved greatly since I met her two and a half years ago: I suppose she has been working hard in school, but her improvement might as easily be attributed to her social activities.

Lola has a very observable “foreign-fetish”. In the few years that I have known her, I think she has “dated” at least six white men, from a variety of far-flung continents. She even moved to Paris for a few months, to be with one French boyfriend who had promised her the world but replaced it at the last moment with a puff pastry. And the only times she calls me up is one she is not involved in one of her amorous liaisons. Which is why I know she must currently be in-between men (not literally).

Although the men at my table were subtly fawning over Lola for the two hours we celebrated at Roxy, Lola was very unsubtly not reciprocating. So when someone suggested taking the free bus to Vibe, Lola was the first to the door. I declined the offer, since it was already nearing 1am. I made plans to see Lola sometime next weekend.

***

Lola walked into the smoky, dark atmosphere of Vibe and her skin literally tingled with the possibilities. Even in the dim light of the disco, she could already see a few interesting men standing by the bar, clustered in groups around some of the table space. The hairs on her arm vibrated with the beat of the music.

One of the guys from Roxy, she thinks his name was Joe? Jeff? offered to get her a beer and she asked for a Corona. When the beer was proffered, she chatted with him for an appropriate length of time (price paid for the beer) and them discreetly moved away. It would never do to be seen with him, for that would only hinder others from approaching.

From the corner of her eyes, she saw one very interesting possibility. He was standing near the wall with two other men. They were taking swigs from their beers, and alternating conversation with each other with moments of unbridled room scanning/scamming. He was tall and fit, wearing a grey tee that fitted perfectly to his muscular build. He had on a pair of well-worn jeans that loved every curve of his ass and he stood perfectly at ease. His hair was dark and wavy, and he sort of resembled the Superman from “Lois and Clark”.

Lola knew that she had caught his eyes when she passed him, since she had walked by with a slight tilt to her head and has seen his eyes move up and down the length of her body. It was like being kissed furtively, or having a stranger come up to you and brush his lips against your bare shoulders.

Lola was standing just slightly in front of him, near the dance floor, and she swayed her body sensually to the beat of the music. She was willing him to approach her, and she kept her will focused, since she was vividly aware that the longer she stood alone, the more likely it would be that she would be approached by another loser, or worse, a local.

“Excuse me,” a deep voice broke into her thoughts in slightly accented Chinese, “are you in love with someone here or would you like to dance?”

Lola turned around and came face to face with Superman, disarming toothy smile, playful eyes and all. She smiled her most welcoming smile and nodded her head shyly.

They danced together for an hour, and Mr. Superman danced extraordinarily well, though he was obviously more concentrated on watching Lola move her taut body than on his own dance moves. At one point, he pulled her close to him and they gyrated to the music. As she moved with him, his thigh would occasionally brush against her crotch, sending waves of pleasure shooting through her.

They finally collapsed from heat and retreated from the dance floor towards the bar. He got two Coronas, and they stood near each other for a moment, trying to talk above the blaring music. He finally suggested that they move outside to converse.

The air outside was damp but cool-ish, since it was now approaching 3 in the morning. Lola’s face was equally flushed from the dancing and from the beer. They walked away from the club a bit, and found a shady space to lean against.

“So what’s your name?” He said, in his slightly-off Chinese.
“Lola, what’s yours?” She replied in English.
“Big Dork.” He smiled. (Actually, I made that up… his name was Simon) “You speak very good English.”
“And you speak very good Chinese. How long have you been in Taiwan?”
“Almost two years,” Simon replied proudly. “I love this place, baby.”
“Where are you from?”
“Canada.”
“Oh… Vancouver?”
“No, Edmonton actually. Why? Have you been to Vancouver before?”
“Yes, my uncle. He lives in Vancouver.”

Their conversation had all the sparkle of flat Diet Coke, but neither could realize it. As they talked, they gradually moved closer until Simon was all but nose-to-nose with Lola.

“Where do you live?” Simon asked.
“Oh, I live on the campus of Wen Hua University. It’s very difficult to live there – I have to take a long taxi to get back home at night.”
“Oh… well, you’re welcome to stay at my place tonight. I don’t live so far away.”

***

Simon led Lola back to his apartment, a three-room apartment that he shared with another Canadian located between Jin Shan and Hsin Sheng South Road just north of Hsin Yi. As they were entering the apartment, Simon didn’t bother turning on the living room lights, and guided Lola directly to his bedroom.

As soon as the door closed behind them, Simon’s lips were on Lola’s. Lola could taste beer on his lips, and he smelled rough – sweaty and smoky, like plum tea. She responded to his urgent kisses, kissing him back fervently, pressing her body against his. She could feel his lean body beneath the t-shirt. He was just muscular enough to suggest that he took care of his body, but by no means was he one of those body-builders that spend all their free time at California or Gold’s. His arms wrapped around her, and his fingers started caressing the bare skin of her back. His touch was so erotic that she thought she would faint.

They continued to kiss as they fell on the unmade, queen-sized bed in the room. There was just enough light coming through the single window in the room that Lola could see the room was vaguely presentable. The desk held a computer and several stacks of papers, but there weren’t random articles of clothing strewn about nor any plates or bags of food laid out in the open, as far as she could tell.

Simon started to undress Lola, first undoing the tie at the back that held her top in place. But then she stopped him and started to undressed herself. Simon rushed to follow suit, discarding his tee with a single, smooth motion.

When Lola removed her top, Simon moaned in pleasure. Lola’s breasts were perfectly formed, small, firm and pert, her nipples hard and standing at attention. Her stomach was flat and smooth, with just the tiniest and sexiest bit of protuberance right under her belly button. He ran his hands over her skin, from waist up to her chest, luxuriating in feeling her young, cool flesh warming beneath his eager fingers. He took one of her nipples between his lips and started licking it in a circular motion. He could feel the nipple getting harder still between his lips, and Lola was squirming with heat under the weight of his body.

Underneath her pants, Lola was wearing a tiny little pair of lace underpants. They were low cut, low slung and black: in the back, the thong cut revealed a luscious, curvy ass. His hands were overwhelmed between the choices of fondling her soft breast or her round, tight bottom. Still, the little bit of cloth hid the part of her he wanted most. As he was still licking her nipples, he ran his fingers lightly across the wisp of fabric covering her crotch. He got even harder when his finger came away hot and wet. Lola moaned loudly.

Simon stood up hurriedly to remove his jean and his boxer, revealing himself to be large and fully erect. Lola watched him from her prone position on the bed with admiration. Unclothed, his body was even better toned than she had imagined, and he had the sexiest traces of hair: a smattering on his chest, and then a luxurious black line that ran from his bellybutton to become a forest of curls around his erection.

Lola pulled Simon back on the bed and back on top of her. Locked in a kiss, she wrapped her legs around his, and savoured the feeling of his hard cock rubbing against her stomach. Simon’s fingers were busy easing her underwear down her thighs and then down her calves and off the bed. Once achieved, Simon started to masturbate Lola, easing two of his fingers inside her, penetrating her deeply, feeling her clutching him tightly – to his fingers, and to his back with her fingernails.

At this point, Lola was moaning deep inside, and she was writhing, pushing her crotch towards him. She was so excited, his fingers were wet with her juices. Simon couldn’t believe how hot she was, her legs spread open, ready to receive him. [next entry]

2001-06-14T22:12:00.000-07:00

If you haven’t seen the Jody Lin Blog hate club that’s gathering in Oriented, please don’t miss out. It’s at the Oriented Forums under Rants and Raves in the thread Jody Lin’s Personal Life.

I find most of the postings absolutely hilarious. Here is the best one so far – it’s a posting from a frequent visitor named “Big Dork” who says:

You know, I think she’s [that’s me he’s referring to] triple-hetero:

girl likes boy
Asian likes Euro
Artist likes banker

I would agree with all but the middle. My first and best love is still Sebastian (and if you’re reading this Seb, I know you’re getting married – I’m not trying to re-kindle anything. Promise. *kiss, kiss*), who is Chinese-American, like me. Even though my current infatuation (can it even be called an infatuation?) is Euro, I’d like to think that it just means that I love people for who they are, and not for the color of their skin. Speaking of the color of a person’s skin, I watched “Charmed” two nights ago and Phoebe (Alyssa Milano) was a ghastly shade of orange. What the heck!?!

***

The hot water heater got fixed yesterday afternoon. And our apartment doesn’t look too bad for the wear of two earthquakes in as many days. So in celebration, I went to get my hair cut at a local hair salon.

Going to get your hair cut in Taipei can be an experience in and of itself. The hair salons are usually staffed by a gaggle of hair professionals who are stacked in a rigid hierarchy. There are high school aged girls who seem to do little more than greet the guests, serve tea, and sit at the front counter and giggle. Then there are the masseuses/hair-washers who attend to the customer for approximately half an hour before the real stylists are delivered from the shrouded back rooms. Most of the stylists in Taiwan are not worth recommending since they seem to subscribe to the school of chemistry: every hair dilemma can be solved by either perming the head into a crown of tight little curls, or by highlighting the hair to a coppery red. I’ve been going to the same hair salon for about two years, and luckily, the stylist that I use there has come to understand that all I ever want is two-inches off, layered in front, and fix the bangs, please.

But the masseuses/hair-washers… now that’s a different story. I don’t know where they train these women (and occasionally, men), but they have strengths comparable to any Norwegian Helga I’ve ever met. Sometimes, they rub my neck and upper back with such raw force that I yelp in pain. And they put the same enthusiasm into washing my hair. The overall sensation is a strange combination of pain and bliss. I’m always on the verge of dozing off, only to be awoken by a particularly sharp push of the thumb. But the end result is fabulous: I feel tingly and unknotted all over. (Better than sex!) Since I’ve been spending more than my fair share of time on the computer recently, the massage and shampoo were well received last night. Then this happened.

As I was getting shampooed, the boss, or lao ban (apparently), was standing just behind me, lambasting a young staff-member. The girl could not have been older than 20, and she stood absolutely still in her salon uniform, her head slightly bowed towards the boss, her afro-esque frizzy orange hair as limp as her shoulders.

This was the gist of the boss’ rant:

“Why are you not wearing any lipstick? You know perfectly well that you are required to wear lipstick at all times when you are on duty. Of all the idiotic things to have forgotten. Just take a look at yourself – so ugly! You represent this salon and I expect you to take some care in your appearance when you are working here. When you get back to your dormitory tonight, I want you to think about what you did today. I never want to see this happen again. Do you hear me?”

The girl’s head had gotten progressively lower as the lao ban’s voice got progressively higher. Finally, she nodded miserably at the lao ban’s final exhortation.

Sometimes in the mornings, if I’m running a little late getting to work, I see these same girls from the salon, lined up in two perfectly executed rows, standing at attention in the open space in front of the 7-eleven next to the salon. They are already uniformed, made-up: bright eyed and chatty. The lao ban stands in front of the girls, a drill Sergeant in pink stripes, and she barks a rapid fire round of commands that are incomprehensible to me. The girls do a series of callisthenic like exercises and get a short sermon/pep talk before they retreat, still in formation, back to the salon.

On Seinfeld, there was the “Soup Nazi”. Apparently, in Taipei, there is the “Hair Nazi”.

***

Mandy was packing her suitcase very nervously and deliberately. She had laid out her clothes on her bed with coordinating pieces layered on top of each other. It would only be a week and a half in Seattle, but she needed to bring at least one “dress-up” outfit, just in case her parents decided that she and Jeremy should attend the New Year’s Eve party at the country club. It was strange to think about her parents and Jeremy in the same sentence. Although Jeremy had all the paper qualifications to be a great “potential son-in-law”, Mandy was afraid that he didn’t have the one external qualification that really counts. His skin wasn’t yellow.

Mandy couldn’t begin to fathom the reasons behind her parent’s aversion to her dating a non-Chinese man. In so many other ways, her parents were the very epitome of fully assimilated Chinese-Americans. Her father had come to the US from Taiwan in the mid-60s to do his PhD in aerospace engineering at Rice. Her mother had been raised in Houston, since her family had emigrated from Guangzhou (via Singapore) and arrived in the US she was in her early teens. They met at a social that was held by the local Chinese Association when her father was in his third year of grad school, and they were married shortly afterwards.

Both of Mandy’s parents spoke nearly flawless English, though her father would often stutter when confronted with longer words and drop the occasional article. But at home, her parents spoke to each other in Chinese. From them, Mandy picked up a decent command of conversational Mandarin.

Mandy has very little recollection of her early life in Texas, but remembers a pivotal and altogether catastrophic moment at age eight, when they moved to California so that her father could take a position at McDonnell Douglas in Long Beach. The movers had been so efficient and Mandy so small and easily overlooked that it was only upon unpacking that Mandy discovered the loss of several irreplaceable bao bei (precious things): a telephone book with the names and addresses of her elementary school friends, her favorite ballet Barbie, and a ring that glowed in the dark that she got from a Coco Puffs Cereal. When Mandy was a sophomore in High School, her parents disassembled their world once more, moving the family up to Seattle, where her father had gotten an enviable position at Boeing. This time, Mandy was prepared: she rebelled by getting into and going to a college on the East Coast, in the South, no less.

When Mandy dragged her parents to Vanderbilt during the pre-frosh “recruiting” days, her parents were appalled. Although the campus was beautiful, the student body was almost uniformly white. When they went to the admissions office to meet with one of the admissions officers, her mother voiced her concerns.
“I’m sorry, Ms. Wright, but we were wondering about diversity on campus.”
“Mrs. Yu,” the admissions officer smiled a brilliant, open lipped smile as she drawled out the last name with her flirty Southern accent, pronouncing it ‘You’, “you have nuthin’ to worry about. We ah very di-verse he-ar. Why, over a qua-ter of our students are from the North.”
Mandy had to stop herself from giggling. But it was the pre-P.C. days, and she would not have expected anything less.

Mandy still remembers the utter look of disbelief in her parents’ eyes when she told them she was choosing Vanderbilt over the University of Washington, Lewis and Clark University and USC. Mandy had fallen in love with Vanderbilt, with its immaculate lawns, Southern mystique and the easy elegance of the beautiful blond co-eds dressed in their coordinated tennis whites. Though her parents pleaded, argued and shouted, they finally caved in when she threatened to not attend college at all if she wasn’t allowed to matriculate at Vanderbilt. In the end, her parents bowed to their strong Confusion education ethics.

Mandy finished packing her suitcase, and glanced at the clock. Shit! It was already a quarter to nine and Jeremy was swinging by in the airport limousine to pick her up at nine o’clock on the way to LaGuardia. She zipped up her Samsonite, ran around her apartment tossing things into her Coach handbag, and picked up her overcoat on the way out the door. She did a quick head to toe in the elevator mirror. She was dressed in New York black: a pair of stretchy slim pants that should be comfortable for the long haul to Seattle, a cashmere turtleneck sweater with a matching cardigan from TSE tossed around her shoulder. Her hair was pulled back in a ponytail with a tortoise-shell clip. She looked a bit ragged around the eyes because of the poor sleep she had had the night before, but she was passably chic.

She peered out the front door window from the foyer and saw a black Cadillac waiting at the curbside. She looked at her watch – 9:03. Damn. Jeremy hated it when she was late.

***

Jeremy finally spoke to her when they were an hour outside of Sea-Tac.

“Are your parents going to pick us up at the airport?”
“No, they’re sending a car service over – my dad couldn’t get out of work today.”
“Oh.” Jeremy pushed the reset button on his business class seat, “I would have thought that they would have made the effort to meet their only child’s new boyfriend.”
“Well… I didn’t actually tell them that you are my… boyfriend.”
“What! Don’t you think they’re going to suspect something when we sleep in the same room? Hell, Mandy, do they even know that I’m coming?”
Mandy fidgeted in her seat, “…of course they know you’re coming. They just think you’re a friend who has nowhere to go to for the holidays.”
“You’ve got to be joking.”
“And we won’t be staying in the same room. My mom told me that she has already prepared the guest bedroom for you.”
Mandy thought that Jeremy was going to explode, but good manners and even better breeding won the best of him. Instead, he turned up the volume of his headset and turned his attention to the in-flight movie.

Jeremy remained silent for the entire ride from Sea-Tac to her home on Queen Anne. But he turned on the charm as soon as he saw her mother, waiting for them at the front door of their large, two-floor home.

“Hi Mom,” Mandy said, greeting her mother with an awkward peck on the cheek.
“Ummm… This is Jeremy,” She gestured at Jeremy standing on the path, just a few steps behind her, “Jeremy, my mother.”
They shook hands politely.
“It’s very nice to meet you, Mrs. Yu.” Jeremy smiled, pronouncing the Yu correctly, as Mandy had taught him.
“Come in, come in. You kids must be tired.” Her mother led the way into the house.
She led them to the living room, a wide, bright room with an entire wall of floor to ceiling windows that offered a view of downtown Seattle and a bit of Puget Sound.
“Wow, what a wonderful view,” Jeremy commented, walking to the window.
“Thank you. Sit, please sit,” Mandy’s mother insisted, “I’ll get the maid to bring us some tea.”

Mandy’s living room was a study in Chinese aesthetics. It was as if old Shanghai existed right in the living room. The chairs were hard, high back mahogany wood, carved with delicate reliefs of songbirds, bamboo forests and mountain scenes, the seat cushions covered with red and gold silk. There were various antiques strategically displayed: some Ming and Yuan dynastic vases, a beautiful antique Chinese cabinet with gold insets, several Chinese calligraphy scrolls and brush paintings. Mandy’s mother came from a prominent Chinese family that had escaped China during the World War. They had managed to escape with a measurable portion of their wealth, as well as many family heirlooms, all of which had been inherited by Mandy’s mother, the only child, when Mandy’s grandparents passed away.

“So, Jeremy,” Mandy’s mother started, in a voice that Mandy recognized as her mother’s socialite voice, “have you ever been to Seattle before?”
“No, actually, but I like the little that I’ve seen of it.”
“And how long have you known Mandy?”
Jeremy looked at Mandy, “We’ve been dating for about half a year now.”
Mandy thought she heard wrong at first, then she looked at the smug little smirk on Jeremy’s mouth and realized that he had very deliberately let the cat out of the bag. She threw him her most withering look and started strategizing about damage control.
Mandy’s mother looked unfazed, “How nice.” [next entry]

2001-06-14T00:43:00.000-07:00

Apparently, there is now a hate forum for my blog. Check it out at the Oriented Rants and Raves Forum under Jody Lin’s Personal Life.

I guess I’m supposed to get incised about this. But it’s hard to get mad at people who are really nothing more to me than blips on the computer screen. Which means they disappear as soon as I close my browser. How many people in life can you do that with? The truth is, I don’t know anything about these nemeses – who they are in real life, who they aspire to be, or what makes them dislike my site so much – I’m just dreadfully sorry that the contents of my site seem to be making them nauseous. I can recommend a very good antacids that can sometimes take away some of the nausea.

One poster suggested that I start a bulletin board on this site: I wish I could. But between writing my daily entries and actually living my life, I don’t have much time left over to figure our how to create a website of my own, much less how to run a bulletin board. Let me once again remind my readers of my enormous technophobia.

***

Outside of my growing legion of critics, I have had a blissfully uncomplicated week so far. I finally finished collecting samples and photos for my review with Phil tomorrow, and I’ve even worked up a power-point presentation to help me address all the issues I have with my job and the company. I know that this makes me officially a dork, but at least I will be a well-prepared dork.

The entire process of going through a year-end review makes me question my suitability for this job. Even when I was working in New York City, I never had to worry about mid-year reviews or year-end evaluations, or any of that other corporate mumble jumble. But Phil considers himself highly enlightened in having adopted very Western management practices, and when the year-end evaluation comes around, he makes a big show of it by emailing heaps upon heaps of documents to all of his employees describing, in excruciating detail, how the evaluation forms should be filled out. I actually get off lightly. Because my Chinese, especially my written Chinese, is abominable, he lets me write up my own version of the evaluation in English, loosely based on the Chinese template that he designed.

How funny is that. My boss is a basically a Chinese boss, pretending to be a European aesthete, while emulating the business strategies of the Americans.

***

Short entry today. My hot water heater exploded last night when Taipei was hit with a small earthquake (we had a bigger one today). I have to find someone to fix it or else no-one will be able to take a shower. Ewww… [next entry]

2001-06-13T03:38:00.000-07:00

I got some responses (fan mail? hate mail?) by email today. Apparently, a lot of you think I should ask for a raise. Thanks for the support.

I've always hated asking for things like promotions and raises. Even when I think I basically deserve one, I've always had this (very Chinese, I think) strange aversion against being "confrontational" by asking for one. In the best of all possible worlds, my boss would come to me, raving about my brilliant contributions and heap rewards and accolades on me. Sigh. I can dream, can't I?

Some may wonder why I am keeping this blog. Basically, I wanted to get these stories up on a website for several reasons: (1) I love to write and don't get an opportunity to do much of it in my work life. Being a young expatriate in Taiwan (some may question my use of the word 'young') seems to me the modern equivalent of F. Scott Fitzgerald being a young expatriate in France, when he did some of his best work. (2) I feel like this is an altogether too precious yet ephemeral time in my life and I'm reluctant to let go of it so lightly. This is my way of preserving my memories, and the stories of those around me. But there are so many stories, so I hope you all aren't too distracted by the device of chronology jumping that I use. (3) My time in Taiwan will ultimately come to an end, and I want to preserve the magic that is this place and the magic of the people that populate this place.

***

When I was a freshman in college, I thought I would chose a "practical" major - like architectural, graphic, or product design. I had been a decent artist in high school, and had received high praise and support from my high school art teachers. But years of "career reinforcement" from my parents had taken effect: art is a hobby, not a job, you can't feed your family on art, etc, etc¡K The only reason they even allowed me to attend Parsons was because a good friend of the family, my godmother, managed to convince them that if I was going to make any money being an artist, my best start was an education at Parsons. Besides, I had always been a mediocre student at best, and my only alternative would have been to attend a mediocre state school. Once they acquiesced on my college destination, my parents quickly refocused their energies on Rebecca, who, although four years younger than me, was already showing great scholastic aptitude.

Luckily my freshman year was full of foundation courses, with bland titles like Drawing Fundamentals, Drawing Concepts, and Design Studio: general prerequisites for all majors. In Design Studio II, I was "discovered" by my professor, Sonja. Sonja introduced me to sculpting, encouraging me to explore three-dimensional design in my studio class. I had done some work with clay in high school, but I had never explored metals, wood, ceramics or mixed media sculpting. I was complete spell-bound by the sense of motion I could capture with sculptures, something I had always loved about artists like Van Gogh and many Cubists but could never re-create on the canvas myself.

But I could in a sculpture.

So, I graduated with a BFA in Fine Arts with a concentration in sculpture. And I compounded my irrelevance to society with an MFA in Visual Arts, also with a concentration in sculpture, from Columbia. The day of my MFA Thesis Exhibition was one of the most nerve-wracking moments in my life. I had done a series of sculptures of the human form in mixed media, using bronze, iron, clay and ceramic mosaic tiles. The intent of the series was to represent the many emotions that could be evoked by the simplest everyday movements: crossing your legs, hailing a cab, stretching while yawning. It was also the first time that my parents were to see my art.

I had managed to keep my personal life and my family life segregated since my first years in college. Despite their easy generosity in paying my tuition, my parents had very little interest in and no understanding of my life as a sculptor. Unlike many of my classmates, whose parents grew up in the US with a wide exposure to and general appreciation of the arts, my parents were both from very poor Taiwanese families that had struggled to survive the Second World War and the subsequent economic domination of Taiwan by KMT supporters from Mainland China. Both my parents have memories of shoeless childhoods and enormous scarcities, not of liberal arts educations and visits to well-endowed art museums. My mother's favorite story is one from her early childhood, when she and her 7 brothers and sisters waited in eager anticipation in their bedroom for the moment when they would be allowed to pick at the remains of a dinner that their father was giving in honour of his boss. The centerpiece of the dinner was a whole steamed fish - a delicacy rarely seen and not often "wasted" on children. But my grandmother had promised her children that they would have a chance at some tender morsels, because courteous guests would only eat one side of the fish, and would never be so impolite as to turn the fish over in the presence of company and their hosts. But to the children's dismay, when they were finally allowed to the dinning room table, there was nothing left but some tofu and vegetables. The fish had been eaten clean: only the backbone, tail and skull were left behind (as many of you know, the brain and eyes of a fish are considered delicacies). My mother says that she had never felt so hungry or disappointed as she did at that very moment.

How could I - having been given the luxury of being an "artist" - even begin to imagine what sort of life my parents had had? So it was always with a twinge of guilt that I attended classes, worked in the studio, and shaped materials between my soft, labour-free fingers.

Sebastian, whom I had been seeing for about a year and a half at that point, had taken a half-day off to support me (emotionally) on the opening night of the exhibition. The exhibits had all been finalized and set the day before, and the graduating Master's candidates were all jittery with last minute "nothing better to occupy our time" nerves. Art is a funny thing - no matter how talented or how brilliant an artist is, no piece ever feels complete enough to be shown. It is often with reluctance that an artist will grant a public viewing at all, and usually, only under heavy-handed pressure. I dressed carefully in my tiny upper-West side studio, putting on a simple black shift dress and a strand of pearls while Sebastian slouched in my couch reading the Wall Street Journal.

"What if my parents hate my stuff?"
"They won't hate your stuff. Your sculptures are amazing."
"Even if they are - which, by the way, they are not - my parents wouldn't know amazing art if it came up to them and bit them in the nose."
"But your sister will know, and she'll tell them that your sculptures are amazing, and then your parents will have to agree."
Sebastian had a very good point there. Through the years, Becca had turned Saint to my rebel, getting into Brown, deciding to pursue a career in law and now dating an extremely tall, extremely Chinese-American medical student at the Brown Medical School. My parents were thrilled. I was thrilled. Rebecca did an extraordinary job keeping the parental heat off me. I could not have asked for more from a sister.

We arrived at the exhibition hall a half hour early, as instructed. All my graduating classmates were congregated, nervously, around the front table, where the exhibition guides were stacked. I picked several up and gave them to Sebastian to hoard for me, and then he and I retreated to a quiet corner, where I read my spiel to him one last time. On opening night, each student was to give a short, 5-minute description of his or her thesis project.

Half an hour later, the hall was packed with parents, friends, other art students and other assorted well-wishers.

I spent most of the evening in a fog, and outside of giving my presentation, I mostly remember hanging around my pieces, answering the odd question, nursing a glass of champagne and occasionally clutching Sebastian's hand with my clammy ones. My sister finally appeared in front of my exhibit, my parents in tow. One might have thought that my parents would have come to my display first, but in fact my parents, being inanely methodical, had actually plodded through the early alphabet of artists before reaching me. I gave my sister a hug, since she had come down to New York from Rhode Island specifically for my opening, for which I was eternally grateful. Then I greeted my parents who were shaking hands with Sebastian.

"Very nice, Jody. You did these by yourself?" My mother said.
"Yes, mom."
"Sebastian, you think Jody should do these things? Don't you like it better if she should do more lady things? Like cooking?" My mother had just recently begun her not-so-subtle campaign known to Sebastian and me as "let's get the older sister married off already".
"No, Mrs. Lin, I really like Jody's art. I think she's very talented."
I smiled at him.
My father had been quietly studying my pieces through this entire exchange. Whereas my mother is gregarious, my father rarely has more than three words to say. This was partially due to the fact that even after nearly thirty years in America, he was still not comfortable with English, preferring always to communicate in the engineers' language of math and physics.
"Su-Yi [my mother's Chinese name]," he motioned at her, "guo lai, guo lai [come here, come here]."

My father was standing in front of an abstract sculpture of a child squatting, peering at something between his cupped hands.

"Ah yah, Su-Yi, ni kan zhe yi ge [look at this one]," my father said softly to my mother, taking her hand in his, in a completely uncharacteristic expression of tenderness.

They stood in front of the statue for minutes, while my sister and I kept looking at each other in disbelief. My father had an almost heart-breaking look on his face, while my mother kept stroking the back of his hand as if mesmerized.

The spell was broken soon after, and I covered my embarrassment by explaining the other pieces at great length to my incomprehensive audience. At the end, my parents gave their subdued approval of my art, which was better than I had dared hope for. And just as they were about to move on to the next exhibit, my father touched my shoulder and said somberly, in Chinese: "That one, the one of the boy. He reminds me of when I was small in Taiwan, and we would play with the cicadas in the summer. That was a good time."

That's what I want to do with my life. I want to have people come up to me and tell me that my sculptures bring them back to a good time. [next entry]

2001-06-11T21:32:00.000-07:00

Aaargh... my life is a f-ing soap opera.

I have my yearly performance review coming up toward the end of the week, so I have to pull together a portfolio of the things I've done this year that I think are best representative of my achievements, my strengths, my weakness, my growth, etc, etc.... I hate this stuff. But the question remains. Should I ask for a raise? Should I ask for a raise? hmmm....

2001-06-10T23:45:00.000-07:00

What a ridiculous weekend

I spent most of Saturday moping around. I didn’t want to go to the gym (though I did some sit-ups in my room) and I didn’t want to go hang out with Elly, though she invited me out to lunch and a movie. I ended up spending the afternoon lounging around in the living room reading old copies of Marie Claire and In Style and channel surfing cable TV. Mandy was in and out of the apartment several times during the day. She started the day in a tennis outfit (she has a few friends that she plays tennis with, religiously, on the weekends) then she showered and changed into a summery gingham dress to go to lunch, then she swung by again around 3 to change into something red for an afternoon Mah-Jong game. When Mandy stopped by the apartment at 7pm to change for dinner and for going out for the night, it finally registered to her that I had been occupying the exact same spot on our couch, wearing my well-loved yellow pajama bottoms, for the past nine hours.

“What the hell is the matter with you?” She plopped down in the armchair facing me, tucking her leg underneath her.
“Nothing.”
“Nothing my ass. You’ve been a total retard for the last three days.”
“Look, I’m not ready to talk about it.”
“Ok, but I’m not going to let you hang around in this stale room for the rest of the night. Let’s go.” She hopped out of her chair, grabbed me roughly by the arm and pulled me out of my very comfortable spot on the sofa.”
“Ow… What the heck.”
Mandy dragged me to the bathroom and shoved me inside. “Take a shower,” she commanded.
“Yes, Ma’am.”

Three quarters of an hour later, I was dressed in a crimson halter top and a pair of slim black pants and we were on our way to Human, a Chinese restaurant on the corner of Hsin Yi and Jian Guo South Road.

We were meeting some of Mandy’s friends there for dinner. Her tennis partner, a local Taiwanese woman named Mei, has a brother who lives in Canada who was visiting for the week. Mei was throwing this get together for her brother, who had gone to graduate school in the US and has since moved to Toronto to work for a telecommunications company.

There were about six people at the table already by the time we joined them. Mei and her brother, David, two women that Mandy seemed to know from tennis, Georgia and Sophia, and then two of David’s college roommates from Tai-Da, Ming-Chi and George. Mandy had called them earlier and told them to go ahead and order, so by the time we arrived, there were plates of steaming food already sitting on the lazy susan. We sat down in the empty seats: Mandy sat between David and Ming-Chi and I sat between George and Sophia.

The dinner was riotous with food and conversation. It turned out that George was an engineer who had started a software company a few years back. He had sold the company to a large local bank about a year ago and decided to bow out of the company recently, leaving the operations to the company’s co-founder. He was now taking a few months off for traveling, and had just returned from Europe. George was a funny fellow- he had the look and feel of every other Chinese engineer I had ever known: a horrible haircut with the stray cowlick near the crown of the head, wire rimmed glasses, short sleeve button front shirt with a front pocket stuffed with a PDA (the modern day equivalent of the pocket protector). But he was full of interesting anecdotes about his travels in Europe, which he did alone (very unusual for the Taiwanese, who usually prefer to travel in Chinese food munching, gift shop raiding packs). He had an unusually extensive knowledge of arts and we talked at great lengths about the V&A in London and our favourite pieces at the Musée D’Orsay.

Then, the conversation at the table turned to the new tabloid magazine that has recently taken Taiwan by storm. Called Next, this is a magazine that can seriously give such notorious titles as “The Sun” and “The National Enquirer” a run for their money. The promoters of the magazine have also taken the idea of “product launch” to an entirely new level. They plastered the airwaves and bus sides with provocative, almost leering promises of exposing the darker sides of Taiwan’s celebrities and politicians. Apparently, the magazine debuted with a big bang, and Georgia told a story about running from 7-Eleven to 7-Eleven looking for a copy until she finally found one copy at a 5th store, and grabbed it from out of the fingers of the omnipresent little old lady.

Unfortunately, my reading comprehension of Chinese is marginal at best: I can struggle through a Manga comic book but little else. Among us three roommates, Julia has by far the best Chinese and she is a constant source of information. Even so, I have very little knowledge of the local celebrities, so I allowed my mind to float away for the duration of this conversation.

I started thinking about my nails, then about a new dress that I had seen at Isabelle Wen’s, then about my monthly dues at the gym which I hadn’t paid yet. I started doing some personal accounting in my head: I had just paid my rent for the month, and we already paid the utilities. There was still a cell phone bill to pay that has been sitting in my purse for over a week, and then there was the upcoming expense of a trip back to New York in August. Then I realized that I hadn’t thought about Jack since I got to dinner. Which made me happy until I realized that I had just thought about him, which annoyed me.

***

I finally broke down and told Mandy about Jack yesterday.

Being the completely dependable girlfriend and kick-ass babe that she is, she immediately summarized the situation with a succinct and well placed: “That f***ing bastard.”

“No wonder you’ve been so out of it these last few days,” Mandy deducted.
“Yea, sorry about that. At first, I just felt confused, then, I felt guilty, then, I felt vindictive. It’s not a good way to start a relationship,” I tried lamely to joke. “The worst part of it is… I just met his fiancée. She’s not ever going to be someone that I’ll be close to… but it’s not like she’s some sort of monster either.”
“Look, this is in no way your fault – no matter what your feelings for Jack may or may not be. From everything you’ve said, it sounds like you kept your feelings under wrap. It wasn’t like you were flirting with him or trying to seduce him…”
I thought about it. “No, not overtly. But I definitely dressed with intent when we went to Kiss.”
Mandy laughed, “Jody, everyone who goes to Kiss on ladies’ night dresses with intent.”
That’s true.

“Just forget about it. Don’t hang out with him. Don’t talk to him. I mean, it was only a kiss. It’s not like you slept with him or anything.”
Hearing it put like that was like having a well-placed punch thrown into my stomach. That was the problem. It was only a kiss. But I had wanted it to be more. I didn’t want to push him away, except that my instincts had reacted before my desire could. I had wanted Jack to follow me home, or to take me to his place. Even now, I still want it to be more.

I wasn’t feeling guilty because Jack had kissed me. I was feeling guilty because the next time, if there ever was a next time, I knew I wouldn’t be able to stop at just a kiss.

***

Mike called me last night and invited me to hang out with him at the night market on Tong Hua Street.

“Is Jack coming along?” I asked.
“No. Why?”
“No reason. Sure, I’ll go.”

Mike came over to the apartment to pick me up and I met him downstairs. Jack’s apartment is near the Sung Shan Domestic Airport so Mike had to ride his motorcycle to get to my apartment. The motorcycle has been with Mike for years, and when he’s not in Taipei, he actually lends it to a local mechanic that he befriended years ago, who uses it and maintains it and keeps it in tip-top shape for when Mike is visiting Taipei.

“Hey Mike.” I kiss him on the cheek.
“Hi gorgeous. How’s your weekend been?”
“Oh… same old, same old. I suppose you’ve been living it up at all the old haunts.”
Mike flashes me a charming Cheshire cat grin, “you know me too well.”

The air was quite nice last night and we meandered through some of the back streets to reach the night market. Mike told me that he was looking for a nice pair of sandals – he had forgotten how unbearable it was to wear socks in the summer.

The night markets in Taiwan are incredible. Just when you think the entire city has gone to sleep because every single restaurant in Taipei seems to close at 8 o’clock sharp (9 if you’re lucky), you can turn a corner and stumble upon the busiest, most bustling bazaar this side of Calcutta. A Taipei night market consists of an entire street (or streets) full of side-by-side open front stores – more stalls than bricks and mortar – bursting at the seams with goods, goods, and more goods!! Squeezed into the thoroughfare are carts loaded with trinkets: hair clips, watches, local crafts, sausages, towels, everything imaginable. These carts are theoretically “illegal” and therefore, when a local policeman comes wielding the long baton of the law, they scatter, like hundreds of tiny comets hurling through space, leaving bewildered shoppers in their wake, clutching their precious goods to their chest. They hide in the alleys until the coast is clear, then they are back monopolizing the road, and the shoppers crowd back in, as if nothing had ever happened. The night markets can be terrific places to shop, if you don’t mind cheaply made, seriously over the top, right in the moment products or products made by Cavalier Killerdiller that are embroidered with logos that mysteriously resemble that of Calvin Klein (thanks, Why Phy). Which I don’t. Because they’re cheap.

Mike and I stick close to each other as we jostle with the locals in the Tong Hua night market. We stop in at all the shoe stores, and I make some detours into some accessories shops. I help Mike pick out a pair of cheap plastic/rubber imitation brand sandals and he helps me pick out two scrunchies, six hairpins and a small wallet. By this time, we’re both a bit sweaty from being side by side with so many people under so many blazing hot lights, so we retreat to a side alley, where we order two servings of tsua bing.

Tsua bing is a very local Taiwan dessert. It’s nothing more than shaved ice topped with a combination of sweet ingredients that can include red bean, green bean, pudding, fruit compote, and lots of other Taiwanese delicacies that defy translation into English. I have my favorite, a very simple shaved ice with condensed milk and two globs of pudding. Mike has something altogether more horrifying, a swirl of mushy colors: black and green and yellow.

“How can you eat that stuff?” I make a face.
“What?” Mike mumbles through a mouthful of ice, “it’s good…”
“Whatever.” I respond, making a gagging noise. “So, what happened with the sisters?”
“Hey. I’m a gentleman. I don’t kiss and tell.”
“Is that so? So what about Cynthia? And Jenny? And Hsiu-qiao? And Yin…”
“Ok. Ok. So I’m a gentleman now. Besides, what happened to you? You totally took off and left me stranded.”
“I didn’t think you’d mind, seeing how you were kind of ‘occupied’.” My fingers air hook the quote marks to emphasize my point. “It was getting late. And too hot. And I’m getting too old for Kiss. Ohh,” I moan, massaging my back in mock pain, “my poor aching bones.”
Mike threw a paper napkin at me but then turned serious. “Did something happen to Jack that night?”
That caught me by surprise. “No….. Why?”
“I just thought that you might have noticed something since you were hanging out with him for part of the night.” Mike looked pensive.
“No… I didn’t notice anything.”
“He’s been acting really strange since then. When I tried to talk to him on Thursday and Friday, he totally blew me off, which I thought was just because he was busy with work. But then, this weekend, he’s been totally shut up in his room, and he wouldn’t even go out to dinner with me yesterday. He finally went out today to have dinner with Emi.”
“That’s weird.” I said unconvincingly. “He’s probably feeling like a shit with guilt for kissing me,” I said silently to myself.
“Maybe he’s just having some problems at work? Or problems with Emi?” I volunteered.

Mike glanced around furtively. He lowered his voice to a whisper. “Well, you know, there’s been nothing but problems with Emi.”
“What do you mean?”
“You have to promise not to tell anyone. I swear to God, Jack will kill me if he finds out that I told you.”
I sat at the open air table, wide eyed and mute. I hate it when anyone pledges me to keep someone else’s confidence. I feel the double burden of having to keep the secret from the world, and from the originator of the secret. But this time, I was too curious to protest.
“Emi’s pregnant.”
“Shit.” I thought to myself, my eyes getting wider.
“And she won’t have an abortion. That’s why Jack’s getting married to her so soon.”
“Holy shit!!” I said loud enough to get a slight stare from a middle aged woman sitting at the next table.
“Shhh…,” Mike hit me on the hand.
“Wait, so you mean this isn’t one of those ‘love-at-first-sight’ things?”
“Well,” Mike floundered, “don’t get the wrong idea. He’s definitely in lust with her, and he’s totally whipped. But he’s basically admitted to me that he’s not sure he wants to get married to her… yet.”
“But that still wouldn’t explain why he’s been so weird with you lately.”
“Well…” Mike looked sheepish, “I kind of told him that I didn’t think he should marry her just because she’s pregnant and… I kind of told him that she’s a…. bitch.”
I wanted to crack up, but didn’t since Mike was looking particularly vulnerable. “You idiot. You should know better than to call the girlfriend of your best-friend a bitch.”
“So now I’m worried that he’s told Emi, though I can’t understand why he would. And I’m worried that he’s thinking about kicking me out of his apartment, which is why he’s been so weird recently.”
I wanted to tell Mike that Jack would never do something like that, but there was a lot of new information to digest and I was no longer sure about anything. All I could do was offer a fall-back plan, “Look, Mike. If things really get that bad, you can always crash at my place for a bit – though not for the whole summer. As much as the girls and I love you, you’re a guy, and that would cramp our style.”
Mike looked relieved.

Mike walked me back to my apartment and hugged me good-bye. As he was putting on his helmet, he called out in parting, “hey, Jody, if you get a chance to talk to Jack, can you try to figure out what’s going on?”

I gave him a thumbs up but walked into the apartment thinking that there was no way that Jack and I would ever have that conversation. [next entry]

2001-06-08T04:04:00.000-07:00

I had to take a half day yesterday. At lunchtime, I told Phil that I wasn't feeling well - and I wasn't. I had barely slept the night before. And although panic was making every single moment feel crystalline: perfectly formed, perfectly clear and perfectly still, I could barely contain the tears that were throbbing just beneath my eyelids.

Sometimes, on the coldest days of winter in New York, I will dig out this long wooly scarf that I have had for at least a decade. To me, the scarf has always been a memory of simpler winters, of snow days and sleds. I could loop the scarf around my neck and the bottom half of my face at least three times, and still the two ends of the scarf would fall well below my waistline. Outside, the scarf is the ultimate in protection: it wraps me up in layers of warmth, the wool both soft and impervious to the elements, and I can feel my entire being snuggling into that scarf. But after I wear it for a half an hour or so, the loops have tightened around my neck, the wool has absorbed some of the moisture from my breath, it starts to itch near my collar - all because I have unwittingly pulled on the ends of the scarf and in the process, tightened the noose. And then I remember why I put the scarf away. Because it does that: it chokes me.

I walk a block in the direction of my apartment, and then stop outside another office building to smoke a cigarette (I never smoke near my own office since none of my co-workers smoke or know I smoke). When I am down to the filter, I suddenly hear a strange sound above me. Startled, I look in the direction of the sound, and something tumbles to the ground with a pathetic little plop a few feet behind me. It is a small songbird, yellow body and green head. It sits on the ground as a duck might sit on a pond, its head drawn into its body, its legs withdrawn and not visible. I look at the bird, it blinks at me. And I lose it. There are tears streaming down my cheeks, yellow and green swimming in the pool of my vision.

The guard in the building must have seen the bird drop, as I had, because he comes running out of the building and stoops by the little thing. He gently cups the bird in his hands and begins to check the bird's wings, his feet, his little head. I can't see much at this point, my eyes full of tears and the guard's hands around the bird, only the beak silently opening and closing. I don't know what happened to that bird: I was too embarrassed to talk to the guard with the tears dripping off my chin. Instead, I made my way back to my apartment.

***

I get home and I write and I write and I write. First I write about that night. About that kiss. And I post it. That makes me feel slightly better. Maybe Jack will read it. Maybe Emi will. Maybe I should send her an email with my web address. After I stop thinking evil thoughts, I start writing this posting. About the day after. Which makes me feel bad all over again.

I feel like a shit. I am not that person: that person who kisses other people's husbands, or boyfriends or fiances. I know what Mandy and Julia would tell me: that he instigated it. That he kissed me. But it doesn't matter. Because I wanted him to kiss me. And in some sort of grand karmic way, I believe that my coveting makes me as culpable as Jack.

***

Julia's first year in Portland was a year of self-discovery. She had played the obedient daughter for so long that she had a world of reservations about succeeding as anything else. The simplest things frightened her: renting an apartment, ordering phone and cable service, buying a car. It wasn't so much that she had never learned to do things by herself; it was the fact that she had never before had the opportunity to do things for herself.

She discovered that she had very definite tastes of her own. Before moving to Portland, there was always a hint of her mother in everything surrounding Julia. The pictures of Julia through high school and college show a Chinese girl with long hair pulled back into a pony tail, smiling tight-lipped at the camera with eyes always slightly averted under uninspired glasses, wearing either a simple long dresses or a pair shapeless jeans and a T-shirt. Julia had convinced herself that being low maintenance and even a bit tomboy-ish were symbols of her unconventional and independent personality. But after her falling out with her mother, she realized that she had actually adopted an entirely bland exterior so as to satisfy her mother's need for a personality-less crutch.

The first thing Julia did was to get her hair cut. She had always admired women like Isabella Rossellini and Jennie Garth (remember her? Of 90210 fame?) and Winona Ryder, whose gamine haircuts made them look both twice as fierce and twice as vulnerable as the more traditional longhaired celebrities. She had never had her hair cut short, and could even vaguely recall her mother telling her, at the ripe young age of 8, that no man would ever want her if she didn't keep her long locks. When Julia stepped out of the salon, her hair chopped down within inches of her scalp, carefully moussed and gelled to look as if she had been riding a motorcycle on the autobahn at high speed, she felt reborn.

Then she when to a piercing parlour. Piercing was just starting to show up in Portland in a big way. In downtown Portland, near Chinatown, where Julia's office was, there were several piercing and tattoo parlours that offered all sorts of mutilative body embellishments. Julia's mother had never allowed Julia to get her ears pierced as a teenager: she told Julia that only whores had their ears pierced, despite Julia's exhortations that all of her high school classmates had their ears pierced: and some of them multiple times.

So one day, sporting her elfin hair-do, she walked into one of the parlours timidly and started browsing the display cases. The store was small: a narrow lane with a display counter running through the middle, and a room in back, where, apparently, the tattoing and piercing took place. The display cases were full of rings and studs: earrings and navel rings and tongue studs and *ahem* other studs. Since she was the only customer in the store that Wednesday afternoon, the storekeeper, a burly, bearded man wearing a white t-shirt and studded leather vest, showed her all of the different accessories. When Julia explained that she wanted her ears pierced, he told her that for her first piercing, she shouldn't be looking at the fancier pieces, but that the piercing fee included pure gold studs, which would help prevent infections.

The shopkeeper's name was Stan, and he turned out to be a funny, warm and completely gentle "body artist". She had her ears pierced that day, and in the following year, she returned to the shop two more times, once to pierce her left year with three more holes, and once to get her belly button pierced (that was painful and ticklish, all at the same time: a physical incongruity that remains vivid to Julia, particularly when she thinks about sex).

Julia enjoyed her job, working in the AmeriCorps. office in Portland. Her job was a cross between being an administrative aid and a project manager; and it was wonderfully fulfilling to work on community projects that had tangible impacts on the people she was meeting on a daily basis. When she wasn't at work, Julia was frequenting the local bars and clubs with her co-workers and her roommate. She discovered some new musicians to be passionate about, including two new Washington based groups called Modest Mouse and Death Cab for Cutie. Although the whole "grunge" thing was tapering off, the Pacific Northwest was settling comfortably into the role of being a new hotbed of musical talent, stealing some of the limelight away from more traditional breeding grounds in the South and Northeast US, or over in the British Isles.

By the end of a year in Portland, the transformation was so complete that even an old college friend could walk right past Julia and never recognize her. Gone were the shapeless clothes, replaced by tank tops and spandex knits that hugged her busty figure and cargo pants and tight jeans that would sit low on her hips, exposing her newly pierced navel. Her tastes still verged on the tomboy-ish: she preferred greens and blues and greys to pinks and purples, she detested frills and high heels, but everything she wore was put together in a ferociously sensual way, as if she was a woman who could drag a man into the bedroom and then toss him out, an emptied shell, in the morning.

Although Julia kept in close contact with her brothers, she never called her mother and her mother never called her. She knew that her mother kept tabs on her through her brothers: her brothers told her as much. So she was careful when talking to her brothers to specify which details could be divulged and which could not.

But in the midst of all her self-righteousness, she could not suppress feeling guilty of the worst kind of filial un-piety. [next entry]

2001-06-07T02:18:00.000-07:00

First of all, despite the fact that I am totally frazzled today, my mind totally preoccupied by what happened last night, I want to start this posting with many thanks to Raymond for his warm write up of my blog in his blog. Check him out! Since my blog has only been up and running for a month… you all can imagine how excited I am to be getting any (non-family, non-coerced) readers at all!

Now on to the reason why I suck. I got a call yesterday in the middle of the day.

“Hey Jody.”
“Hi Mike, what’s up?” I cradle the receiver with my shoulder, trying to work on the computer at the same time.
“Do you want to go to Kiss tonight? It’s ladies night.”
“First of all, Mike. Let me explain to you how tonight is a weeknight, which means that I have to get up tomorrow morning. And second, aren’t you getting too old for this stuff?”
“Bite your tongue woman. I’ll never be too old for this stuff.”
“Besides, why do you need me along? Wouldn’t I just be cramping your style?”
“I thought you could keep Jack company.”
I can feel my cheeks flush. “I’m sure Jack doesn’t need my company. Besides, why don’t you guys take Emi along?”
“Umm…. I think she has something else planned for tonight.”
Ok. So I know Mike too well - but there was definitely something he was not saying. Just then, I saw Phil’s shiny forehead appear on the periphery of my vision. I whispered into the phone, “Hey, I’ve got to go. Call me later and I’ll decide then.”
“Ok. Talk to you later.”
“Bye.”

So being the complete spineless wus that I am, Mike finally persuaded me to go. (Have you noticed how often my so-called friends manage to bully me into doing things?) But being the total psycho, it meant rushing home after work and dinner so that I could take a shower and get primped.

It’s finally getting tropical in Taipei, which means that by the time I get through the day, my makeup feels like silly putty that has been smeared on my face (poor pores) and my clothing stick to me damply. Or so I say to justify the inordinate amount of gussying I did last night.

After jumping out of the shower (and shaving all those nooks and crannies that I have been neglecting for the past few weeks), I ran some mousse in me hair and wrapped the ends around some large curlers I had borrowed from Mandy. Then I moisturized (my mother used to tell me that moisturizer is a woman’s best friend. I never believed her until I hit my 30th birthday, at which point I became a true believer). I puffed myself with BeneFit’s Kitten goes to Paris, a “missing” you gift my mother had sent to Taiwan a few months ago. (Can you believe it? My mother is getting positively chic in her old age… But I don’t think she actually knew what she was getting me. More likely, she thought the cartoon kitten on the packaging was cute and innocent – maybe a Hello Kitty for the West.) I had never used this stuff before, but it’s fabulous. The powder made my skin look iridescent, as if wrapped in gossamer, and the light lilac scent was perfectly understated and heady. And I had the perfect perfume to complement it, Vivienne Westwood’s Boudoir. Hmm… it seemed like I had some unseemly thoughts running through my mind.

I ransacked my closet and ran into the living room several times in my kimono robe (my roommates were camped out in from the telly there) wailing about not having anything to wear. Unfortunately, Mandy is several sizes (and inches) larger than me, otherwise I would have gladly borrowed some of her couture rags. Finally, Mandy, getting sick and tired of me, followed me into my room, and started shuffling with a fashionista’s precision through my (extremely) overstuffed closet.

“Here, wear one of these.”

She threw two dresses on the bed, turned around and headed back into the living room.

One was the classic little black dress, an Alessandro Dell’Aqua that I had just bought a month ago at half price from the Sunrise Department store. It looked really bland on the bed, but I knew that it was an incredibly tight and sexy little number that emphasized my legs, my personal “best feature”. The other was a dress I had bought in San Francisco maybe 2 years ago that I had since forgotten about (the problem with extremely overstuffed closets – full of sound and fury, symbolizing… nothing to wear). I fondly call it my flamenco dress. It is a spaghetti strapped dress, made up of three layers of airy silk chiffon, the top layer black and the bottom two, shades of red. The bodice of the dress is body skimming, black with only the subtlest hint of red; then the skirt starts flaring out just below the hips. The three layers of fabric are asymmetrically and variably cut at the hem so that the red layers finally make a full appearance. It looks like a dancing dress. So I chose the dancing dress.

Putting on a “dress-up” dress is always transformative. I love the feeling of the fabric sliding over my body, the way that the edge of the skirt brushes seductively against my calves, the way the invisible zipper kisses my skin as I zip up. And there I am, slightly comical in my curlers and this beautiful dress.

It was almost ten, which was when I was supposed to meet Mike and Jack at Kiss. But I knew that they would go in first, without me, and so I could still take my time. I blew dry my hair, and then removed the curlers – my hair is unresponsively straight and thick, so even with the chemical aid and the blow-drying, all I really got was a bit more body. Then I put on my “out on the town” face.

I dislike makeup with a passion, and am not particularly good about make-up maintenance. By the time I remember get to a mirror, I have usually eaten off all of my lipstick, my foundation is blotchy, and I’ve managed to rub my eyes, and in the process, have smudges of mascara under my eyes. It doesn’t help that the heat and humidity of this country will very literally melt the stuff right off of your face. But when you’re my age, a girl simply cannot leave the house with a naked face! So I’ve pared my makeup routine down significantly: some concealer to even out my complexion, a dusting of powder, and some sparkling eye shadow when I am going out. And then a swab of either Bobbi Brown or MAC lip gloss on the cab ride.

By this time, it was a quarter past ten, so I grabbed my purse, a pair of strappy black heels and headed for the front door.

“Hey,” Julia chimes, “you look nice.”
Mandy looks me up and down critically. “You’re missing something….”
She shuffles into her own room and we heard a few drawers banging open and shut. She runs out and clasps around my neck a multi stranded black soft wire chocker, on which little glittery red beads are strung. The perfect accessory. Then she takes out two tiny hair clips, little red rhinestone flowers, that she clips, at hock, in my hair. I love living with a natural born stylist. She takes two steps back, “Now, you look ready.”

I blew them kisses (ok, not really… I mean, who blows kisses anymore?) and hurried out to catch a cab up to Kiss.

Kiss was hopping when I got there: they checked my ID (how much do I love that?? Makes me feel young!) and waved me in. Kiss is always full of very attractive (and very young) people, and especially so on Wednesday nights. I hadn’t been to Kiss since last summer (when Mike last dragged me) and had forgotten how meat market the place can feel.

I hate the first few minutes in any bar/disco. Especially when I’m alone. I look out over the sea of black hair heads (on my tiptoes) and feel strangely… small. At least last night I was looking for a couple of a-doh-ah (Taiwanese for white people….): that made the hunt a bit easier. I finally found them on the second floor balcony, and they’d managed to snag a table that looks out on the dance floor and two very scantily clad Taiwanese maidens (must be Mike’s doing, I thought).

Mike and Jack sang out their greetings, and Jack pulled out the empty chair next to him. I sat down and Mike introduced the two girls sitting to either side of him. Apparently, one was a student of Mike’s from many years back that he had run into on the streets, and the other was her younger sister (they both looked slightly jail-bait-ish to me). Though dressed provocatively, they were demure and wary. But Mike is nothing if not charming. Even his Chinese is completely calculated: when he talked to the girls, I heard nothing predatory or smarmy in his words at all, instead, he teased them gently, and drew the girls out of their Chinese reticence.

While Mike was focused on the girls, Jack and I started carrying a pretend conversation about work while whispering about Mike’s lecherous behaviour. I must admit that the feminist side of me sometimes reacts violently to Mike’s wanton pursuit of women, but I’ve come to realize that although he flirts a lot, he rarely does anything that could really hurt a girl’s heart. He may lust after the good girls, but he will go home with the bad ones. And he is brutally honest: he has never wanted to get married, and he lets each and every girl he becomes involved with know that, up front.

Jack looked relaxed last night. He had a pair of khaki’s on and a royal blue and black striped polo shirt that showed off his broad shoulders. Although I’ve already owned up to my preference for men in suits, I found myself reacting as strongly to the un-suited Jack (yikes! I just pictured Jack actually “un-suited” -- *gulp*) as I had to the suited Jack.

Jack noticed that I didn’t have a drink and offered to get one at the bar for me. I asked for a whiskey sour, and he headed down to the bar. The two girls were now sitting together, speaking sotto voce, so Mike scooted his chair next to mine.

“Hey girl, you’re looking sexy tonight”
I beam with pleasure. “I didn’t think you’d noticed. What’s with the two girls? And sisters!?! That’s way too kinky.”
“Hey, don’t blame me. I only invited Rainbow (the older one). She was the one that brought her sister along. I think the sister was suppose to be some sort of protection.”
I giggle.
“So give me the scoop, Mike…” I lean into him, “Why is Jack out without his fiancée? That’s soooo wrong.”
Mike shifts in his seat, “Well, to tell you the truth… she has a curfew, which doesn’t help… but her curfew’s at one, so it shouldn’t have stopped her from coming. More importantly,” he hesitates, “I don’t think she likes me very much.”
“What?? How can anyone help but love this face??” I squeeze his cheek playfully. “No, seriously… why do you say that?”
He shrugs, “I just get this feeling. I mean, she goes out of her way not to be at Jack’s when she knows I’ll be there. I think she even calls in advance to find out if I’m going to be around. And she’s chillingly civil to me when we are in the same room together.”
“But she barely knows you.”
“What can I say?” He shrugs again. “I hate putting Jack in this situation, and I’ve even offered to move out. But he says that nothing’s wrong.”

I see Jack heading back to the table, balancing my drink and four bottles of beer. Mike and I stop talking to help Jack disentangle.

At one point, Mike and the two girls headed down to the dance floor. Mike’s quite a good dancer, and he looked smooth down below us, twirling around with the two girls. They were obviously impressed and would burst into fits of giggles, their smiles discreetly shielded behind their hands. Jack and I watched them for a while, then Jack asked me if I wanted to dance.

We made our way down to the packed dance floor, where we did our best to *shake it up*. I love dancing, and get easily wrapped in the music, so I temporarily forget that I’m dancing with a guy whom I apparently have some repressed interest in. Jack danced better than I remembered, though he is not nearly as polished or enthusiastic a dancer as Mike. Oh well, once a white boy, always a white boy….

A slowish dance comes on after we’d been on the floor for maybe an hour (it’s easy to lose track of time at Kiss if you don’t wear a watch – like me). I thought that we would definitely be retreating to the bar for some hydrating, but instead, Jack slid his arms under mine, and drew me slightly closer – not close enough to be construed as intimacy, but it definitely made breathing harder for me. He leaned his head down toward mine (even in 3 inch + platform heels, Jack was still a few inches taller than me) and we swayed in time to the music.

“You smell really nice,” his whisper caressed my ear.
“Thanks.” My throat felt incredibly dry, and I could barely concentrate on my voice above the arrhythmia in my chest.
“And do you know that you look absolutely lovely tonight?” His fingers were stroking my back through the dress, so gently that it was barely perceivable.
“Oh, I got this dress years ago in San Francisco… I had forgotten all about it but Mandy…dug it out of… my closet” I rambled nervously, my voice tapering off at the end of the sentence.
Jack stepped closer to me, and his arms tightened around me.
“Oh, what the hell,” I thought. I leaned my head against his shoulder, squeezed my eyes shut and spent the rest of the song reveling in the warmth of having someone so close – a sensation I felt newly awakened to.

We broke apart after the song, and mutually headed towards aqua. I was seriously overheated at this point, and not only from the dancing. That, combined with the alcohol I had had earlier, was making me feel terribly suffocated.

“I need to go outside and get some air.” I yelled into Jack’s ear, as the upbeat dance music resurged.
Jack scanned the dance floor and saw Mike, still occupied, now dancing with Rainbow alone, “I’ll go with you.”

We made our way down the corridor, down the elevator and down to the front entrance of the Magnolia Hotel. There were already small clusters of post-partiers gathered at the distant curbside, clambering into waiting cabs. I headed toward the side parking lot, and once out of the glare of entrance lights, I sighed, and leaned against a low concrete pillar.

“Hey, what time is it?” I casually asked Jack, who was a few feet away, leaning against another pillar.
“Um…” Jack squinted at his watch, “almost one.”
“Shit.” I muttered under my breath. “I’m going to be miserable tomorrow.”
“Believe me… I share your pain.”
Even in those wee hours between dawn and dusk, the air was still thick with humidity; its oppressiveness reason enough not to talk.
“I really should go… but I feel bad bagging on Mike like this.” I finally said.
“Oh, I wouldn’t worry about it. I’m sure the last thing on Mike’s mind is what we’re up to.”
“Yeah,” I laughed, “I guess you’re right.”
“Do you want me to get the number of your cab for you?” In Taiwan, it isn’t unusual for criminal offenders to become Taxi drivers after incarceration, so women traveling alone after dark make it a practice to have someone write down their taxi numbers… just in case.
“Yes, do you mind?”
“No, of course not.”

Jack moved towards me as I bent down to pick up my purse, which I had put on the floor, propped up against the pillar.

As I stood up, he was suddenly in front of me, sandwiching me between his body and the short parking pillar. He slid one hand behind my neck, and bent his head toward me.

I went into shock when his lips touched mine, an explosion of indecipherable emotions rocking my heart, my mind, my skin, my groin. His mouth was firm against mine, unperceivable moist, like I was brushing the heavy petals of a rose against my lips. His tongue traced the top of my bottom lip, as delicately as a violinist touching a Stradivarius for the first time. I reacted instinctively, pushing into the kiss hungrily. Yearning emanated from my stomach and rumbled through my body.

I don’t know how long the kiss lasted. Even when I think about it now, the skin on my bare arms feel statically charged -- an aura of electrified memory. But I finally pushed him away and drew in sharp gasp of air.

“I can’t…” I muttered, eyes averted.
“I’m sorry… I don’t know what…”
I had already started walking away from him, towards the taxis.

Jack followed me to the curbside and helped me into a taxi. But my departure was silent, awkward. I don’t know – should I have shook his hand? Hugged him goodbye? Waved?

What the hell have I gotten myself into? [next entry]

2001-06-05T21:43:00.000-07:00

When it rains, it pours. I got an email yesterday from an ex-boyfriend:

Hi Jody,

How are things going in Taiwan? When are you coming back to the States anyways? Don’t you think you’ve been playing in Asia for too long?

I wanted to tell you that I got engaged this past weekend. I’m sure you remember Carol from the last time you were in Atlanta. Well, this last weekend was our three-year anniversary, and we took a trip to New Jersey to visit her parents. I proposed to her in the Rainbow Room (yes, it’s clichéd, but at least it was beautiful), and she said yes!!

Anyways, I wanted to share my news with you. I hope things are going well for you in that hot and muggy city. : p

Lots of Love,
Sebastian

I am over Sebastian… I really really (no, really) am. It’s been years since we dated, and he’s seriously one of my best friends in the entire world. I broke all the “ex” rules with Sebastian. Sebastian has a truly bizarre sense of humour that totally cracks me up and such an incredibly optimistic viewpoint on life and the world that I feel slightly high whenever I hang with him.

Now, why didn’t I marry him?

Because he drove me crazy. Because he could not sit still. Because he was such a perfectionist in everything that I could hardly keep myself from being a nervous wreck around him. Because I ran away to Taiwan and he wouldn’t come along and long distance relationships suck big eggs. Because he had a really unhealthy fascination for Winona Ryder. Hmmm… listing his imperfections is actually making me feel better. But not as good as I’d feel if I could just get a Cosmopolitan from Watershed. (Or a cigarette… *sigh*)

I met Sebastian through my baby sister, Rebecca. I had just graduated from Parson’s and Rebecca was starting her first year at Brown. It turned out that her freshman roommate had an older brother who was living in New York City and working at Skadden Arps.

When Becca came to visit me in New York that fall, her roommate, Lainy, also came along to visit her brother. We all went to dinner together that weekend.

Sebastian had just graduated from Harvard Law and had spent the summer in Boston preparing for the New York Bar. He had been living in New York for just over a month, and was having a miserable time, having only really seen the city that exists between his office and his apartment in the Upper West Side. Luckily for me, Sebastian also turned out to be extremely cute.

Sebastian is slightly taller than me, of average weight and build. But he has a really great face: his eyes and chin are extremely expressive, he has a huge smile that he shares readily, and his entire face is so chiseled that I could have gotten a paper-cut from his cheekbones. He is also an ABC: his parents emigrated from Hong Kong to Georgia just before he was born.

Anyways, to make a long story short, Sebastian and I started hanging out after our sisters went back to Brown, and we started dating a month later. I thought my mother would literally die from pleasure the first time she met Sebastian. He really was every Chinese mother’s wet dream: smart, good education, good job, clean and polite.

Sebastian was also a major catalyst for my life-changing decision to come to Taiwan. But that’s a story for another time.

***

Last night I had dinner at a once popular restaurant on Fu Hsing North Road, called Apocalypse Now. Before you start humming the Valkyrian theme song from Wagner’s Ring Opera, I must warn you that the noise level in the restaurant is so overwhelming that any such exertion would basically be for naught. I was never a big fan of the restaurant, but many of my friends used to have a penchant for it – until they all moved to parts of the city further removed, or started to frequent the branch restaurant that opened in the Warner Village “Entertainment Complex”.

The inside of the restaurant is reminiscent of a 1950s bomb shelter or ammunitions hanger. The ceiling is incredibly high and the walls are all unfinished slate grey. Peeling concrete and cracks in the wall (no doubt once strategic, now supplemented by the Earthquake of ’99) all contribute to the “doom is chic” effect. The restaurant has always struck me as a place more befitting on the set of the movie “Trainspotting” than in the middle of a fairly cosmopolitan, wealth obsessed, Asian city.

Anyways, I was dragged there by Julia, who was having dinner with some of her co-workers, translators and editors who work for the Taipei Times. I conceded despite my fatigue (where hunger is strong, the will is weak) since HBO is no longer showing Sex and the City reruns on Tuesday nights. (That’s Ok… Apparently the 3rd season is about to start soon!!)

We pigged out!! And my poor diet! Since I didn’t have all that much to contribute to the conversation, which revolved around office gossip: how one translator was such a attention seeker, and how another editorial contributor was incredibly hard to work with, I mostly kept myself busy picking at the food.

One of the greatest incentives to come to Taiwan (for those of you who have not been here before) is the food. Forget the silly Chinese food that people get in the US. What we’re talking about here is several magnitudes better for half the price. Even a place like Apocalypse Now, which is almost all show and no substance, has a generous offering of reasonably prepared Chinese food. What’s the difference? First, the variations on green. Instead of the usual Western offering of Caesar salad, romaine salad, spring salad, spinach salad, blah, blah…., there is a cornucopia of verdant leafy vegetables to munch on. When the waitress is asked about the seasonal vegetables, the Chinese rolls off her tongue, most of it untranslatable: ”di gua ye, gao li cai, gao li hsin, kong hsin tsai, jie lan, A-tsai, bo tsai….” A veritable veggie smorgasbord. Second, the flavors. The Chinese understand better than most that the palate cannot be satisfied by salt alone. Every dish on the table seems to dance with exciting combinations of flavor: sweet and sour? Bitter and minty? Soy sauce and Cilantro?

Of course, to get the full culinary experience in Taiwan, it is imperative to speak Chinese (or be with people who speak Chinese). I remember my first awful experience in Taiwan, the summer of my freshman year in college. I had come to Taiwan to work for a newly opened art gallery, a job set up by my uncle. I was a completely bratty, self-indulgent, and all together snotty teenager back then (some would argue that I haven’t changed a bit), and desperate to hang out with “older, more sophisticated” expatriates rather than the “uncouth” locals. (*Sigh*, I embarrass myself with my past bravado.) So I took to staying out late, eating all my meals with my American “friends” whom I met near the student areas of Shi Da and Tai Da. I couldn’t be bothered to get to know my own relatives better.

I spoke almost no Chinese: “Ni hao ma? Duo shao? Ce suo zai na li?”, and read even less. My friends fared not much better. So rather than enjoying all the culinary delights on offer in Taiwan, I ended up starving on a diet on “niu rou mien” (beef noodle soup) and “shui jiao” (boiled dumplings), the only two dishes I could order in Chinese. The only upside of that entire trip was that I lost the freshman fifteen that I had gained the previous year.

Ah... the capricious and fatuous nature of youth. [next entry]

2001-06-05T00:34:00.000-07:00

I'm republishing to Blogspot now.

2001-06-03T22:12:00.000-07:00

Mandy and Jeremy were decidedly an item within a week of that first date.

The Monday after their date, Mandy arrived at her office and a bouquet of roses was waiting for her at her desk. She was thrilled by the gesture (and slightly titillated by the envious looks from her co-workers). A few minutes later, Mandy’s boss and friend, Deborah, was hovering around her cubicle, eager to get the blow by blow on the date. Mandy had already told Deborah about meeting Jeremy at Gotham, but the girls at Calvin Klein were not easily impressed by first dates and red roses.

Deborah was far more impressed by how Jeremy had apparently managed to fluster Mandy, the epitome of detached nonchalance.

Mandy filled Deborah in on the details: the wonderful dinner at Café des Artistes, the after-dinner walk. And how difficult it had been to not invite Jeremy in after the kiss on the stoops of her apartment building.

“I am breathless.” Mandy lowered her voice.
“And I am puce with envy.” Deborah joked. She was actually married to a great guy and could hardly be envious, regardless the color.
“Do you think he’ll call soon?”
“Honey, I think the only way you won’t hear from him is if he had a coronary.”

And that was the moment the phone started ringing.

“Hi. This is Mandy.”
“Mandy!” Jeremy’s sonorous baritone voice echoed through the ear-piece. “It’s Jeremy, how are you?”
Mandy covered the mouth-piece of the phoned and mouthed to Deborah, “Oh my GOD… it’s him”
Deborah scooted out of the cubicle but not before giving Mandy a very definite “I told you so” look.
“Hi, Jeremy. I got your flowers. Thank you so much.”
“I was thinking about you all day yesterday, even though I was at the office catching up on paperwork; so by the end of the day, I couldn’t resist getting the florist to put something together for you. I hope they’re as gorgeous as you are.”
Mandy was sure he could hear her blush through the phone. “They are beautiful.”
“Listen… I was hoping you’d be free for dinner tonight.”
And Mandy did something she had never done before. Rather than pretending to have to check her calendar or making up some excuse so as to put off a date made on the same day, she said, “I’d love to.”

That night, they went to a Thai restaurant in midtown. And Jeremy surprised Mandy with a pair of tickets to a piano concert at Carnegie Hall.

The next night, they had dinner at a Japanese restaurant on the East side in the mid-70s.

And the next night, Mandy invited Jeremy up to her apartment.

***

Mandy disappeared. For the rest of the summer and into the fall, weeks would go by before I would hear from Mandy. Then she would call, apoplectic with apologies: she had been taken to this function or that one by Jeremy; or she and Jeremy had just come back from the Catskills, or Vermont, or, one time, from Bermuda. We would try to schedule a meal or coffee, but then Mandy would call back and cancel at the last moment, either because she was too tired, or more likely, too busy being with Jeremy.

I wasn’t upset at Mandy, far from it. It was nice to experience, even second hand, the buzz of being in love. I had spent most of that autumn bouncing from one strange blind date to another, all set up by too well meaning friends. I was starting to hypothesize about the presence of some undetectable chemical in NYC’s drinking water that turned otherwise sensible young single men into frothing lunatics whenever something even vaguely resembling a relationship came into view. (Ok, ok… Women are from Venus, Men are from Mars… I get it, I get it…)

Then, one afternoon, after the gluttony of Thanksgiving and well into the frantic Christmas season, I ran into Mandy on Fifth Avenue. She was walking uptown, her arms full of bags from Saks, and I was heading downtown, towards Grand Central Station. It was a beautiful sunny early winter day, when it seemed as if the light was being magnified by the dry cold of the air.

I almost didn’t recognize Mandy, wrapped in a camel trench styled coat and her eyes hidden behind enormous Jackie O sunglasses. But she ran towards me in her high heeled brown leather boots, and hugged me with a squeal.

We ducked into Takashimaya, a minimalistic department store imported from Japan, and headed into the tea shop in the basement. After we arranged our bags and coats next to our table, we ordered two pots of Japanese green tea and an assortment of sweet cakes.

“God, I haven’t seen you in forever, Mandy”
“Oh, I’m so sorry. It’s been one thing after another. Things have been ridiculous at work: you wouldn’t believe the number of stores that Calvin is planning to open in the next two years.”
“Um hmm… Whatever. As if your busy-ness has to do with work and not with Mr. Branford.”
Mandy smiled mysteriously, her lips pursed in conspiracy with Mona Lisa. “Jeremy has asked about you. He says that we should do something together some time.”
“Let me guess, the two of you have been holed up in either your apartment or his every single free moment you have had since this summer, and you haven’t even gotten around to meeting each other’s friends.”
Mandy blushed an affirmative.
I patted her on the hand. “You know I’m kidding. I’m really happy that you like this guy.”
“I do. Can you believe that it’s been five months?”
“Wow. I haven’t been a relationship that’s lasted that long since college.”

Mandy waxed rhapsodic about Jeremy for a few minutes before she dropped two bombshells in a row.

“So what are you doing for Christmas? Are you going home?” I asked, since I was personally going to be spending two fun filled weeks with my folks and baby sister in Poughkeepsie.
“Yea, I’m going back to Seattle.”
“For how long?”
“Umm… A week and a half. We’ll be back the day after New Year’s”
“We?”
“Yeah, Jeremy’s coming along.”
“Are you kidding?” Mandy’s parent’s are notoriously against her dating non-Chinese men. “Your parents are going to shit.”
“I know…”
“So why are you putting yourself through this?” I ask, incredulous.
“Because we’re thinking about moving in together.”

***

Mandy was as surprised with the force of her relationship with Jeremy as I was. She had never been swept off her very practical, grounded feet before. She was definitely very much a victim of the “beautiful people syndrome”. In the past, most of the men she had dated were far more in love with her than she had been with them, which lead to protracted romances and humiliating (for the men) breakups (we should all be so lucky). She had long believed that she was not a romantic at heart and that was the reason for her detachment from the men she had dated. At her core, she believed that someday, she would meet a reasonably well off, suitably handsome Chinese man whom she would marry and then settle into a comfortable life as a housewife, the way her mother, another great beauty, had in her time.

Instead, she suddenly found herself in an explosive relationship (she touched her arm, which was still sore and healing from last week), with a man she felt very literally addicted to. And she was going to take him home to her extremely controlling parents. Although she had already warned Jeremy about her father’s pi qi (temper), and he had assured her that he would tread as softly as on eggshells, she couldn’t help but be apprehensive about what she was getting herself into.

***

There are nights in Taiwan when I wonder what it’s all about. Why I am here, so removed from so many of the people and things that I care about in America. Those are the moments when I lock myself in my room, my computer on and linked into the location-less world wide web, my radio blasting Macy Gray or the soundtrack from Felicity (ok, so sue me… I still think that the best years of my life were in college) until one of my roommates tries to break down the door.

Sundays. Despondent Sundays. The night when single girls wallow in their singleness, trying to drown the absence of romance in a glass of wine and really bad pop music. The weekend is finally over, a blur of activity laced with alcohol and cigarettes to remove the possibility of introspection. What did I do this weekend? I barely remember. I remember a movie (Moulin Rouge – not bad, Disney on drugs), drinks (Watershed Cosmopolitans – two thumbs up), shopping with Julia (on Chung Hsiao – one and a half thumbs down… half a day and all I bought was a lousy bottle of nail polish).

I still haven’t told Mandy or Julia about strange events of the past week. I guess that I believe that as long as I don’t voice my feelings, then they don’t exist. I laugh at myself. And unfortunately, not applicable to ex-boyfriends.

The truth is, I cannot get Jack out of my mind. I can remember everything about the dinner with him. The way his eyes crinkled at the edges when he smiled. The way he leaned into the table when he got excited about the direction of the conversation. The way he was effortless with his chopsticks but so clumsy when trying to maneuver around the bar. It was so bad at one point this weekend that I had to run over to the gym and into the steam room to wash away feeling rotten for being so absorbed by an (almost) married man.

Anyways, enough bellyaching. Check out the new issue of Those Brown Eyes. Very cool cover article about Christine. [next entry]

2001-06-03T07:32:00.000-07:00

Well, after the hustle of the past week, I was planning on a quiet night Friday. I was going to take a long bath (though it's getting summery outside) and camp out in my living room with a glass of wine and a stack of back issues of i-D magazine. But fate conspired against me.

First, I didn't get off from work until 8:30, because I had to hang around waiting for some samples to be delivered from one of our vendors. The vendor had spent the entire day promising me that the goods would be at our office in half an hour. On days like this, I find myself running out of the vocabulary necessary to chastise our Taiwanese vendors. Sigh. The price of not doing business in your native language. And the samples had to be ready for a 7:30 morning meeting on Monday.

On the way home, I ran into Cynthia, who was on her way to Warner's to meet up with someone named Emi for dinner.

"Who?"
"Don't you know Jack B.?"
"Yea, I just had dinner with him and Mike last night." I ignore the uncomfortable tugging in my chest.
"Emi's Jack's fiancee."
[Gulp.]
"Oh.... I heard he was engaged. But I've never met her before. How do you know her?"
"We used to work together at KPMG." Cynthia paused, "Have you eaten yet?"
I shake my head.
"Do you want to join us?"
"Umm... I don't know... I feel kind of grungy."

And I looked kind of grungy. I had had a pretty down and dirty day at the office, so I was wearing a really old pair of black twill pants and a purple baby-tee. I had no make-up on, I was wearing a pair of artsy fartsy glasses with thick black square frames that were hip for about 10 seconds in 1996, and my hair was tied in a poor excuse for a bun. But it was tempting to go and meet the woman that Jack is going to marry. When would I get another chance like this?

"You should come. I don't know Emi that well, and having you there would make dinner more interesting."
I was heartened to hear this. "Ok. Sure. Where're we going to eat?"

It turned out that we were going to eat at the Taiwanese Restaurant Chin Yeh in the Mitsukoshi Department store. I like this restaurant a lot, but usually eat at the one closer to home, on the corner of Kwang Fu South Road and Hsin Yi Road. But this was fine, and I was hungry.

We approached a woman standing in front of the Mitsukoshi department store. She was absolutely stunning. She was a few inches taller than I, she had shoulder length hair, and she was perfectly model proportioned: long legs, tiny waist, lean from shoulder to toe. And she had the most unbelievable alabaster complexion: so clear that she seemed to glow from within. Her face was cherubically round, with a perfect little Chinese upturned nose, and a pouty, bowstring mouth. Her eyes were small, lazy lidded: even as her mouth widened into a smile upon seeing Cynthia, her eyes remain sleepily half-lidded. But her entire demeanor exuded sophistication and grace.

She was dressed impeccably, which made me feel even grungier in my T and vintage pants. She was wearing a sleeveless shift dress, in a blue grey silk, which molded her lean lines. The square neck emphasized her long neck, around which hung a strand of pearls. She was wearing a pair of close toe pumps, in the exact same shade of grey as her dress, and slung around one shoulder was a smallish, black Prada handbag.

Cynthia ran up to her squealing congratulations before pulling Emi's left hand into her hands. And on her ring finger was an enormous diamond ring in a classic Tiffany setting. Even from my position a few steps behind, I could see that the diamond was well over a carat, and probably cost more than my entire year's salary. I could feel every muscle from my jaw down to my ankles contract with tension.

"Oh, I'm sorry," Cynthia gushed as she looked away from the ring, "Emi, this is Jody. Jody, Emi."
"Hi," in chorus, as we reached out and shook hands.
"I hope you don't mind my joining your dinner." I volunteer.
"No, of course not." Emi spoke softly with a Chinese inflected English accent.

We headed up towards the restaurant and were seated within minutes. We ordered a few of the classic dishes.

It turned out that Emi had lived in Hong Kong for a few years when growing up and then did her college degree at a University in London, which is why she spoke English with a British accent. She had graduated in 1997, and then had returned to Taiwan to be with her family. She worked for KPMG for a few years, and now she was working at Price Waterhouse in their tax department.

"Didn't you have dinner with Jack last night?" Emi asked at some point halfway through dinner.
"Yea, and Mike. You must know Mike, since he's staying with Jack." I reply.
"Um hm. I've only just met him."
"He's hilarious. I've known him forever, and he totally cracks me up."
"Yes, I imagine he would."

Her response threw me. Her tone made the statement ring somewhere between an insult at Mike and an insult at me. It was strange but I let it slide, assuming that I was misinterpreting her meaning because of her accent.

"So how did you meet Jack?" Cynthia asked, a bit later.
"We met through some mutual friends. Actually, it was quite romantic. We were both at a wedding banquet at the Grand Hyatt. I knew the bride and he knew the groom. Then at some point during the banquet, a colleague of his who used to be my classmate introduced us. We exchanged name cards and I thought nothing more of it. Then he called me that week and asked me to dinner."
"And you went?"
"I was reluctant at first, but he really made me feel comfortable over the phone. So I gave it a go. And now." Emi smiled.
"I just can't believe how fast you guys got engaged." Cynthia gushed.
"Well, I guess it just felt... right."
"All I can say is, I don't know how you got him to do that. All the guys I know are deeply commitmentphobic. Especially the guys here in Taiwan." Cynthia moaned.
"Jack's a great guy," I injected. "Are you guys living together?"
Emi blushed and lowered her eyes. "No... My parents are very protective and old-fashioned. I live with them out in Neihu. They've met Jack and really like him. But they're definitely not going to let me move out until I've gotten married."
"So when's the wedding?" Cynthia prodded.
"We're getting married in September."
My heart skipped two beats
Cynthia exclaimed, with a sharp intake of air, "Oh my god. That's so soon."
"I've been absolutely frantic. In fact, I'm leaving my job at the end of June so I can spend the rest of the summer planning the wedding."

I half-heartedly participated in the rest of the dinner. September. I don't know why the news should shake me so deeply. I knew that Jack was engaged. And I wasn't really interested in him. I mean, I've known Jack for years, and never gave him a second thought.

Ok, I decided, I obviously need psychiatric help. I must be one of those psycho bitches who's only into men she can't have. Help! [next entry]

2001-05-31T03:10:00.000-07:00

So we didn’t go to Wind last night because I didn’t do a good enough job throwing a supreme Diva fit. Actually, Mike was really into having Chinese food after having suffered a full year of eating bad Ameri-Chinese food, so I capitulated and we went toPeople on An Ho Road instead.

People is a very up-scale Chinese restaurant that serves nouveau, fusion Chinese cuisine. The décor is definitely minimalistic Japanese though: the space reminiscent of many a bare stucco walled, high ceiling post-modern restaurant in New York City. And in the great tradition of exclusivity, the only way into the restaurant (outside of standing around looking lost until someone opens the door from the inside) is to activate the automatic door by sticking your hand into a door side alter piece with a motion detector strategically built within. Of course, Mike, Jack and I, being the jaded, sophisticated Taipei-ese that we are, fought each other to be the first to put his/her hand in. Mike won. (Hurmph… all I can say is – he has at least a foot on me, so it wasn’t quite fair.)

The place was buzzing last night, and there was a dull roar around us all through dinner. Mike was basking in the ren nao (roughly translated as excitement, bustling activity – a very Chinese concept) of the place. I was simply trying to contain my hunger and a headache.

It was really good to see Mike and Jack, but there was a rush of news for me to get acclimated to. Mike is having a wonderful time in DC, so much so that he bought a house near his school this past year. There’s no guarantee that his teaching appointment will extend past the five-year contract that he signed, but he’s pretty confident that he wants to make DC his permanent base in the US. Given his background in policy oriented NGOs, and his doctorate work in International Affairs, I can’t say I’m hugely surprised. It does, however, put returning to Taiwan for anything longer than a summer distinctly out of the scope of his future possibilities. Although many of his friends recognized his teaching job in the US as a serious career commitment on his part, there were the occasional skeptics that had wagered on Mike returning to Taipei within one year, two years max. In particular, they were certain he would not be able to live for long without the “feminine charms” of this island nation. Even last night, Mike spent quite a bit of time waxing nostalgically of his youthful years in Taiwan. Despite that, Mike, frivolous Mike, who was, for a long time, the most willingly irresponsible person I associated with, has definitely gone and become an adult. (brrr…)

Jack, on the other hand, has always been mature beyond his years. Even so, he has apparently achieved a degree of stability that is well beyond my personal reach, both now and in any sort of foreseeable future. Besides his very fast track job at the investment bank, Jack has also managed to meet someone (in Taiwan!!) in the past year and has gotten engaged. I was nearly hyperventilating at this piece of news. The last time I ran into Jack was last October, only seven months ago, and at that time, he was still very single. Why am I the only person left on this planet who is not paired up or in the process of pairing up? (I don’t count Mandy, Julia and Mike – Mandy’s picky, Julia’s young and Mike’s… well, Mike.)

Jack looked great. He has gained some weight since the last time I saw him – he is still by no means portly, but he looks less like a gangly high school boy and more like a businessman. He was wearing a very smart suit (swoon), since he had come to dinner straight from work. It was a dark grey, lightweight wool suit with a very discreet, invisible checkered weave pattern throughout. He wore a light blue shirt underneath with a silvery, dove grey tie. His brunette hair was cut professionally short, and it suited his heavier face and broad shoulders. He was very lively over dinner, gregarious in a way that I was not accustomed to from him. Jack has definitely undergone a dramatic personality upheaval in the past year. I have always known him to be well-educated and well-spoken, but in a quiet and shy way. I could hardly believe the change into the charming, sophisticated, and wickedly intelligent man sitting at the table with me. Of course, I had to wonder if it was the mystery fiancée that had facilitated this enormous makeover in Jack.

Of course, I was no shirking violet myself. In a tribute to the 40s, I had gotten dressed in a very frilly, white floral print dress. The neck was a plunging, frilly V line, and the below the knee skirt also ended with frilly flourish. The dress was cinched at the waist with a skinny red belt that picked up the red from the large orchid type flowers on the dress, and I accessorized the outfit with a pair of close toed, Sabrina heeled sandals. I had set my hair in large curlers after I washed my hair, so although my hair was tied back in a ponytail, it was curling softly below the tie. My ponytail was decorated with a large red fabric flower.

The conversation flowed like wine. We started with the merits of living in DC (Jack had lived there briefly, I had spent one summer at summer school at Georgetown), and heard all about the great bars and hot women near Capitol Hill (interns aside). Then Mike and I taunted Jack mercilessly about his reverence for Xiao Bushi (Chinese for “little Bush”). At some point, the conversation inevitably turned to my lack of a significant other, and I shared with them my surreal experience with Mark from the night before.

Mike: What’s the matter with you anyways? Are you sure you’re not just being too picky?
Me: Excuse me!! Have you seen the kind of guys that run around Taipei? It’s no wonder that the local girls are always looking to snatch a foreign man or foreign-born Chinese man for themselves.
Jack: What exactly is the problem with the local guys?
Me: Well… they’re just so… [greatly lowered voice] geeky. They can’t dress, they can barely hold a conversation, and they don’t exactly have the best attitudes about women.
Mike: Yea, yea… the ol’ little Emperor syndrome. I’ve heard it a thousand times. [Mock yawn] So what was wrong with Mark? He’s a hua chiao like you.
Jack: I’ve met him a couple of times – he’s actually a bit of an ass. Believe me, you’re glad that he’s dating someone else.
[I feel an instant re-affirmation of self.]
Me: Well, he was really boring. All he could talk about was sports and money.
Mike: You mean, unlike the intellectually stimulating conversations that we’ve been having here.
Me: [giggling] Exactly.
Mike: Well, as far as I’m concerned, bad relationships are like cigarettes: they’re both really horrible habits that you can’t break when you’re in Taipei. [He lights up a Marlboro Light to emphasize his point.]
Me: [subduing my own puff-puff closet smoke-aholicness] Exactly.

At one point during dinner, I started to feel distinctly cold. One of the worse things about Taiwan is that despite the almost unbearable heat in the summer, you can almost never leave the house without a sweater, since every single public space inevitably has its air-conditioning set to “arctic”. And the situation was really bad last night because it wasn’t even warm outside to begin with. I hadn’t brought a sweater with me because I was… stupid. So there I was, sitting at the restaurant, with goose pimples visibly dotting my arms, trying to keep my lips from turning blue. That’s when Jack, who was sitting next to me at the square table, very smoothly slipped his jacket, which had been hanging off the back of his chair, around my shoulders.

My stomach did a small flip, which had nothing to do with the enormous amount of food we had just consumed. I managed to smile at Jack gratefully. He simply winked at me and continued the conversation we had been having about Casper Weinburger (Secretary of Defense under President Reagan, current chairman of Forbes magazine, who had given a speech at the American Club yesterday, which Jack attended). What was wrong with me? This was Jack. Mike’s friend. The finance guy. Who can’t dance. And is a Republican to boot.

After dinner, we walked over to Saints and Sinners, a Sports Bar-esque pub/ restaurant just across the street on An Ho Road. I had a glass of the house Red, and the boys had Heinekens. (Boys and Beers… something I will never understand.) I saw Raymond at the bar, with a very lithe and pretty boy, and I went over to say hello. Raymond introduced me to the boy, who is apparently the toy du jour, and then he invited me to his place over the weekend to catch up on the a week’s worth of Charmed (an addictive TV show about three 20 something witches who wear decidedly un-saintly outfits) that he had taped. I told him that I would call him later in the week when I knew what plans I had for the weekend. While I was talking to Raymond, my eyes kept flitting back to Mike and Jack, who were engrossed in conversation. Raymond noticed the source of my distraction. (Raymond is incredibly sensitive about certain things.)

“He’s hot.” Raymond said, in his best drag-queen voice.
“hmmm… which one?”
“The one in the suit, girlfriend.” Raymond replied, his voice incredulous, “Don't tell me you don’t have your eyes all over that one. And he’s probably straight, isn’t he?”
“Uh huh. And I don’t. He’s just an old friend. And he’s engaged.” I drag my eyes away from Jack to look at Raymond.
“Whatever. Here.” Raymond said sardonically as he handed me a paper napkin he had grabbed from the bar.
“What the heck, Ray?”
“To wipe the drool, dahling.”
I was fully in blush mode when I walked back to join the boys.

It was pouring outside by the time we finished a second round of drinks. None of us had an umbrella with us. Mike was a bit frantic, since he had a “date” who was meeting him at Kiss. The fact that Mike manages to step so seamlessly back into life in Taipei, no matter how long he is away, has always impressed me. I decided to wait in the bar for the rain to let up, since my apartment is within walking distance – so I told Mike to take a taxi to his “appointment”.

“I’ll stay and keep you company,” Jack said, his voice deep and smooth, “if you don’t mind. I have to get home too, but I’m not going in the same direction as Mike, so I might as well have another drink.”
“Sure.” I strain to keep my voice light, meanwhile, my heart is thundering in beat with the raindrops outside.

We wave to Mike as he plunges into a taxi waiting outside, and I get another glass of wine while Jack orders a whiskey dry. He asks me about my work, and I briefly rant about the pointlessness of what I do.

“What about your sculptures?” He asks
I hadn’t said anything about my sculptures tonight, so he must have remembered them from some other conversation. “I have finished a few pieces in the past year.” I exaggerated. I’ve finished exactly two pieces. “But I’m not really sure how to show them or even get them noticed in Taiwan.”
“You should talk to some of the cafés in Taipei.” Jack suggested, “quite a few of the newer, more aesthetic ones seem to solicit local artists for works to display in their spaces.”
“Really?” I had never heard of this before.
“Sure. I can even take you to a few of the cafés that I know of near the Tai Da area.”
“That would be…. so great.”

By the time we finished our drinks, the rain had abated significantly.

Jack offered to walk me home, which I politely declined, though I was absolutely dying to spend more time with him. When we walked outside, he was standing so close to me at one point that I had trouble keeping my head clear. He smelled incredible. Dusky and manly, sharp and sweet, a heady mix. Gods!

I waited on the sidewalk with Jack until he hailed a cab. As he was climbing in the cab, he promised he would call me soon.

Unlikely, I thought, and was saddened and grateful at the same time. Where was I hoping to go, with these strange feelings for an almost married man? I walked home quickly, eager to get out of the drizzle. Julia was home, but in the middle of some work, and besides, I didn’t know what, if anything, I wanted to confess.

I had an incredibly erotic dream last night. Jack was in the dream, but I remember very few of the details. What am I doing? [next entry]

2001-05-30T02:16:00.000-07:00

I went to another going away party last night at this little café/ restaurant near Shi Da. In this country, it feels like someone is always leaving. This going away party was for an acquaintance/ friend, Sean, who has been in Taiwan about the same length of time as me. He came to study Chinese, but by the time he left, he had also worked for a Taiwanese consulting company, married a Taiwanese woman, and started to act Chinese (he’s Caucasian). Sean and I weren’t close, but we would meet up occasionally: he would fill me in on what was happening in the Ultimate Frisbee circles, and I would annoy him by telling him how Chinese he is.

Yes, that’s right: Ultimate Frisbee. For some reason, the two real strong sports related expat magnets are Ultimate Frisbee and Hash House Harriers. I don’t belong to either, but I seem to know lots of people who are attached to either one, or the other. Most of the people my age seem to latch more strongly onto Ultimate. There are teams throughout Asia, and even semi-formal competitive tournaments in exotic places like Australia and Bali. (Hmmm… maybe I should start playing Ultimate.) But most perplexing is the fact that Ultimate Frisbee players worldwide seem to all know each other. It is as small world.

After I had been at the party for an hour and was thinking it was time for a quick exit, Mark shows up – that’s right, my date Mark from a few weeks back. And just as I was about to start feeling guilty for not having called him to follow up on our running date, I noticed that he was with a girl!! She was young. Really, really young. (I later found out that she’s a sophomore in college, here in Taiwan – which makes her like 19.) She was quite pretty, with an air of softness and innocence about her. She was also reed thin, in the way that only Asian born and bred girls seem to be able to achieve – anorexically thin without actually being anorexic. Her hair was pulled back from her face in a soft bun, which made her look a bit like a ballet dancer. Mark introduced her to everyone at the café: her name was Strawberry.

Of course my curiosity was piqued. Was she a flavor of the moment? Or was it possible that Mark had somehow actually found someone between our last date and today? Or worse, maybe he had already been seeing Strawberry when he had gone on the date with me. Whatever the situation, Mark’s “relationship” with Strawberry couldn’t be altogether casual, given the way he was possessively draping his arm around her shoulder and the fact that some of the people at the party seem to have already met Strawberry.

I also noticed that outside a cursory nod of acknowledgement when he first came into the café, Mark could barely bring himself to otherwise talk to me or even look at me. What!?! Did he think I was hurt that he had brought a date with him? Of course, I was fuming inside. Part of me was pissed that he could have such a smug attitude – the idea that he believed himself to be such a catch that I would be disconsolate from not “winning” him was so patently absurd to be laughable. And yet, being a woman, I could not help wondering what she had that made him want to be with her, when he had not so much as given me a second call after our date. Needless to say, the rest of the party was a bust for me.

I went home just before midnight and luckily, both my roommates were still awake. I told them about my nightmare of an encounter and that started a tirade against men, especially exes. Not that Mark could be considered an ex in any sense of the word, but we decided that his behaviour was very typical of the “first time running into an ex after a breakup” genre. How absurd.

***

Work has been going by like a wiz. Besides several models that I finally finished today, Phil also had me help him edit a new company brochure. It was very standard fare: excellence, quality, human-touch, timely execution, blah blah blah… I always help Phil edit English documents that come out of this office, but I find the process excruciating. I’ve never had much interest in writing to begin with, and, personally, I think my grammar is horrific. I guess I’ve improved, having done so much English editing. Nevertheless, whenever I have to do editing work, I find it taking up exorbitant chunks of my time.

I’ve been so busy at work that I haven’t even had the chance to buy anything all week, though I desperately need a jar of oil-free moisturizer (any suggestions about what brand I should buy?) and some towels. I’ve even ordered-in lunch boxes every day for the last week and a half, so I haven’t been doing my usual noontime window-shopping strolls.

Tonight, I’m meeting up with two really old friends for dinner, Mike M. and Jack B. Mike is in town for the summer, and he’s staying with John, who is living in Taipei for the moment. I’ve known them for eons: met both of them in Taiwan when I was here for Loveboat (an infamous “summer camp” for overseas Chinese) in the summer of 1992. Of course, I didn’t meet them in the Loveboat program, since both Mike and Jack are Caucasian. I think I met Mike at Kiss La Boca (on Tun Hua North Road, in the Magnolia Hotel) and he introduced me to Jack later that summer.

Mike is one of those foreigners who cannot get enough of this country. He is an absolute riot and both my roommates adore him, though they would never want to date him (although there was a serious flirtation going on between him and Julia at one point). He lived in Taiwan for years and years, working for various international NGOs until he finally got an opportunity in the US that he couldn’t turn down. He was offered a teaching position at American University in Washington DC about two years ago which he jumped at. So now we are deprived of his presence here in Taiwan. But because he only teaches during the academic year, and because he is addicted to Taipei, he comes back for the summers.

Jack, on the other hand, is working for a large, multi-national investment bank in Taipei (why do I know so many people that work for investment banks?). He’s been back in Taipei for a year, but this will be the first time that I’ve seen him this year, so I’m kind of excited. Jack and I are basically “friends by way of Mike”, but I do think he’s a nice guy. He’s really quiet – a bookish, studious type. He worked at a bunch of different jobs in Taipei through the 90s until he got his act together and went back to the US to get his MBA. He’s now in Taipei on an expatriate package and has one of those titles that sounds important and impressive. He’s definitely a different person now from the person I knew back in the early 90s: much more serious and a bit of a workaholic, which is why I rarely see him.

I get to pick the restaurant, so I think we’re going to go to Wind, a pricey Western restaurant on Tun Hua South Road across the street from the Far Eastern Hotel. I don’t have to pay tonight and I think I deserve a good meal. [next entry]

2001-05-27T19:30:00.000-07:00

Blogger's been down for a few days and I've been too busy to post. What a drag.

2001-05-23T02:32:00.000-07:00

Last night on the season finale of Sex and the City (rerun of the second season here in Taiwan), Carrie finally gets closure with Mr. Big. He gets engaged to the “stick figure with no soul” after six months despite being the epitome of the male commitment-phobe when he had been with Carrie.

Why do we all get involved in relationships like Carrie’s with Big? Why do we subject ourselves to such horrible humiliation by throwing our hearts and souls after men that, for whatever reason, are unattainable, unavailable, and unassailable? Why do we look for good men and still find ourselves uncontrollably drawn to the very men that have already broken our hearts?

***

Mandy went out with Jeremy for the first time the week after they met at Gotham. Mandy was a mess the entire day of the date: she was acting like a teenager on the night of her prom. I had spent the day with Mandy, partly to help her get ready for her date, but mostly because I wanted to indulge in some beauty treatment myself and it was a great excuse to go shopping. We both had facials, manicures and pedicures in the morning. Then we spent the early afternoon at Bloomingdale’s: Mandy wanted to get a pair of stockings and a pair of earrings to go with her outfit. We went through every jewelry counter in the store before we saw an absolutely stunning pair of gold earrings set with a dangling pearl drop.

We were back in her apartment by four, since Jeremy was meeting her at the restaurant at seven. Mandy showered while I lounged on her bed reading the latest issue of Glamour. I looked up at Mandy when she emerged from her bathroom, head and body wrapped in large vanilla towels.

“Why are you so nervous,” I asked, “I’ve never seen you spend so much time getting ready for a guy – not to mention a guy you’ve only met once.”
“Who says I’m nervous?” She shrugged. “It’s just dinner. I mean, for all I know, I should almost have one of those contingency plans – you know – like maybe you should call me at nine, just in case he’s an absolute bore. Then I can tell him I have an emergency and have to leave.”
Mandy starts fiddling with the bottles on her dresser, “Damn… where is my moisturizer?”
I clear my throat to get her attention, then point to the bed, where she had left an open jar of Estee Lauder moisturizer just moments before. “You were saying?”
“Oh, who am I kidding,” Mandy giggles and flops on the bed next to me, working the moisturizer into her face. “I’ve been thinking about Jeremy the entire week. I almost called him at his office earlier this week.” Her face grimaces at the thought.
“But you didn’t.”
“Noooo… But I was seriously hyperventilating when he called to confirm our date for tonight.”
Mandy’s not usually so easily phased.
“Ugh,” Mandy continued, toweling dry her long hair, “I can’t believe how moronic I’m being about this whole thing. Look.” She reaches under her bed and pulled out a black shoebox stamped with the DKNY logo on top, “I spent almost $200 on these shoes, just for this date tonight.” She pulled out a pair of three inch stilettos, with several cream colored mini straps that criss-crossed each other across the front, anchored by an ankle strap in back.”
I drooled. I had never spent more than 100 dollars on a pair of shoes before. (And usually, I would spend less than 50.)
“Wow… can I try them on?” Surprisingly, Mandy’s feet are only a half size larger than mine, even though she is many, many inches taller than I am, which means that we can sometimes wear each other’s sandals.
“Sure.” Mandy headed back into the bathroom to dry her hair.
Of course the shoes were wonderful. Heavenly. They looked feminine and sweet and bold and sexy all at the same time.
“Mandy?”
“Yea?” She had to almost yell above the noise of the dryer.
“If things don’t work out with Jeremy, can I have these shoes?”
When Mandy walked out of the bathroom, she was still laughing.

An hour plus later, after powdering and moisturizing her entire body, after plucking and tweezing and smoothing and squeezing, after spending a fortune of cosmetics on the face to look unmade-up, Mandy was ready. And she looked drop dead gorgeous.

She was wearing a really simple cream-colored silk shift from Jil Sanders. It had a very low square neckline, was fitted at the waist and then hung straight down from the hips. It ended mid calf, but had a discreet slit on one side that ran to mid thigh. The fabric was a fairly heavy silk charmeuse, which was unlined, but draped beautifully, smoothing out any lumps or bumps (not that Mandy has any). She was wearing a delicate gold chain around her neck with a gold charm that was the Chinese character “Fu” (fortune). She was wearing the DKNY sandals and the new earrings that we had bought at Bloomingdale’s. Her hair was down, but the front pinned behind the ears. She had set her hair is some large rollers when she was blow drying it, so her hair looked voluminous and full, and curled inward at the ends.

“God, Mandy, you look great.”
Mandy tilted her head and looked at herself critically in the full-length mirror by her closet. Then she added her good luck charms: a dark jade bracelet, and a gold ring inscribed with some Tibetan Buddhist script. She twirled around, checking out her back, then squealed in delight. “Thanks, Jody. Oh Gawd, I’m so excited.”

Before we left her apartment, she sprayed some Issey Miyaki on her pulse points. Then I walked her to the subway station.

Mandy was meeting Jeremy at Café Des Artiste, a very romantic French restaurant on the upper west side. It was a beautiful day, so Mandy strolled from the subway station at Lincoln Center to the restaurant slowly, enjoying the early evening air, perusing the street side stores, even stopping in briefly at an Anna Sui store. She wanted to be about ten minutes late in arriving, since she always felt self-conscious sitting at a table by herself, waiting for someone to arrive.

She arrived at Café Des Artiste at exactly 7:10.

“Hi, reservation for 2 at 7 for Branford.”
The maitre d’ looked down his list and smiled at her, “yes, right this way. Your party is already here.”

Mandy was led through the candle lit restaurant, full of well-dressed couples thoroughly wrapped in each other’s presence. She noticed very few men looking at her, which was both rare and yet thrilling for her, for it was one more indication of the romantic power of this place. Then she saw Jeremy standing up, next to their table, beaming at her. She felt a shiver running through her, from the crook of her back through the ends of her hair, her skin tingling beneath the silk dress. She hoped that her braless nipples were not betraying her excitement.

Mandy sat down across from Jeremy at an intimate round table.

“You look beautiful.”
“Thank you. So do you.” Mandy could feel the scarlet in her cheeks, though he did look wonderful. He was wearing a dark gray suit with slightly discernable pinstripes. His brunette hair was cut short and preppy, the front parted to the left. His eyes were the same disconcerting piercing azure blue.
“You know, I was so excited to be seeing you again, I actually left the office in a panic, thinking that I wouldn’t be able to get here on time. I thought my taxi driver was going to toss me back out on the street, after I asked him to hurry for the fifth or sixth time.”
Mandy couldn’t help but smile, she couldn’t believe that he was admitting to so much after so little time. “Well, you weren’t late. In fact, I guess I’m the one who should be apologizing for being tardy.”
“I’ll only accept the apology if you promise to let me order you a drink.”

Two red wines and gin and tonics later, Jeremy and Mandy were completely engrossed in each other. Mandy found out that Jeremy had done his undergraduate degree at Dartmouth and had gotten his MBA from Columbia. He hated his job (she was surprised at his easy admission of his distaste for finance) but knew it was a good way to make money fast to do what he really wanted in life – which was, apparently, to open a restaurant in New York City. And he knew a lot about restaurants: all the greatest places in the City and why they were great, and even about some yet to be opened restaurants. He spent his summer weekends up in the Catskills (Mandy loved that – she was sick and tired of going with her friends to the Hamptons in the summer. It was too crowded and she was not a beach person). And he was very athletic.

Mandy told Jeremy about her college experience (Vanderbilt studying Art History), about how she had been hoping for a job in a museum or at one of the auction houses, but when nothing turned up in the art field, she had been lured into fashion. Mandy talked about growing up in Seattle and her parent’s paranoid vision of New York City. They got into a heated but half-teasing discussion about the merits of cubist art (Mandy a strong proponent, Jeremy not seeing the point).

They discovered their shared passions for skiing, fish (the live kind, not the kind served as food), Thai food and ER. (Jeremy admitted that he had once upon a time had closet envy for his friends who went into the medical profession.) They were both largely politically neutral, though Mandy tended toward Clinton, and Jeremy toward Reagan.

“Reagan,” Mandy mocked, “I couldn’t even vote when Reagan was running for President.”

At ten, Mandy was still scraping the edges of her Crème Brule custard plate.
“I guess we should get going.” Jeremy got up and went up to pay the bill.

Jeremy offered to take Mandy home, and Mandy suggested they walk, even though she lived 30 blocks away. (And she was wearing her very beautiful, but very painful new shoes.) Despite the pinching in her feet, Mandy was very literally on cloud nine. When they reached her apartment, Mandy did something she almost never does. She leaned in.

And it was worth it. [next entry]

2001-05-22T02:59:00.000-07:00

I was reading about President Chen Shui-Bian’s visit to New York in the New York Times today. Although I don’t really take an active role in politics (neither here nor in the US), I couldn’t help but feel somewhat proud of how far Taiwan has come. Despite my personal opinions about President Chen’s tenure in the Presidency to date (I think he’s too egotistical, impetuous, and impractical), it is hard to deny that he is truly emblematic of the democratic nation that Taiwan has become. After nearly nine decades of rule by a single, autocratic party, the fact that the leader of Taiwan is actually a member of the long suppressed opposition party is nothing short of a miracle. Of course, Taiwan still has a terrific challenge ahead: with China increasingly militant and aggressive, and with Taiwanese businessmen blindly chasing the economic promises of the mainland, I don’t know how realistic it is to have faith in an autonomous Taiwan.

***

It’s been raining on and off for the last two days. Today, right before lunch, the rain really came down hard, plastering Taipei with a swath of limp gray fog. We had a staff meeting at work this morning, that went on forever. Whatever happened to the good old days of efficiency in the workplace?

Mandy and I had a long heart to heart last night. I have been feeling out of sorts lately. As with every other Chinese person I know, a part of me is defined by my professional life and, in turn, by what I wear, what I own, where I go – the trappings of “success” in my professional life. Truth be told, beneath my artistic exterior lays a fairly superficial girl (and hopefully, under that superficial girl lies a truly free and independent core). I am the stereotypical Asian-American woman. I love branding. I love shopping. I am a total clotheshorse. I never leave the house without lipstick. I like men in suits (and then those same men out of said suits). I like powerful men. I like powerful cars. But what I don’t like is the chase after those things.

I’ve always expected good things to fall into my life. And now, at 30-something, I’m starting to wonder if I haven’t waited too long for too little.

To make a long story short, I’m sick of working at Conceptual Designs. For the past half-year or so, I’ve definitely felt like I’m not quite applying myself in a way that is meaningful. When I first started at this company, it was going to be a part time job. The pay was reasonable, and it allowed me to use my Chinese in a work environment. I thought I would be able to do the modeling work in the mornings, and spend the afternoons working on my own art. I had a grande plan all worked out: I would spend part of my salary renting a dingy but cheap workspace where I would spend the afternoons working on my sculptures.

But it took less than two months for Phil to convert me into a full time employee. The increase in pay and stability was really welcomed at the beginning. We had just moved into this apartment – and although my part time salary covered the rent and living expenses, it left precious little for going out, or the trinkets I’d come to covet. Being a full time employee at Conceptual Designs allowed gave me a disposable income. Which sent me on a spending binge. Which put me in debt. Which kept me tied to my job.

I am moderately successful at what I do. And I know that I will soon be promoted within the company to be an accounts manager, which will mean more money, and less art. Phil doesn’t need me to make clay models anymore – he would rather send me around the world, drumming up business with my nice, crisp, professional appearance. The money will mean a pair of Jimmy Choos, maybe even an (discounted) Armani suit. I might finally be able to save some money. The wallet is willing but the heart is not.

I know that if I become an accounts manager, I will officially be on a career track. I will start to walk into those “networking opportunities” and actually see them as networking opportunities, rather than an opportunity to get a free beer and finger foods.

I know that if I become an accounts manager, I will start wearing slick suits and slicker shoes. I will have to learn not to pick at my nail polish, and I will never miss a hair appointment or a session with my personal trainer (ok, maybe I won’t be that bad).

I know that if I become an accounts manager, I would finally have the kind of resume that I could translate into a good paying job in the US. Because just like all the other expatriates I know here, isn’t that the ultimate goal? To find a good job in the West?

I know that if I become an accounts manager, I will never go back to my art. It will become a hobby: a preoccupation, rather than an occupation.

But at 30-something, can I really afford to go back into starving artist mode?

***

I saw something today that absolutely sent me into a tailspin today. And I saw it in Cosmo, of all places. It was an ad that said "DO WHAT SCARES YOU". What if everything scares me? [next entry]

2001-05-21T02:51:00.000-07:00

Today is Mandy’s birthday (Happy Birthday, girl!). She turns the big three-oh.

Julia and I pulled together a day of activity for Mandy on Saturday: first, we took her for a spa day at the Grand Hyatt Hotel. We all had the full body, aromatherapy session/ message, which was then followed by the regular spa circuit of steam room, sauna, and Jacuzzi. Nothing says “bonding” (not the sexual kind – the spiritual kind) like a spa day. Julia brought her full array of beauty products (Julia has a real fetish for the stuff), and we had a blast trying on different creams and masks. She even made both of us put on hair masks – guaranteed to make your hair softer, shinier and more luxurious.

Despite my self-absorbed nature, I have never been a strong advocate of this kind of body pampering. My definition of stress therapy is a credit card with a high credit limit and a large shopping center. But doing the occasional spa day with the girls is one of the things I enjoy most about being in Taipei. We don’t do them often – maybe once or twice a year, usually for a special occasion, but because we end up spending so much quality time together, without a lot of distractions, it becomes a great time to “catch up”.

And so, on Saturday, sitting in the Jacuzzi, all of our faces covered in multi-hued face masks (mine was charcoal, Julia had a mint-green mask on, and Mandy was smothered in a peachy-pink mask), we naturally started talking about the meaning of life. Julia revealed an absolute BOMB. She had started considering going back to the US. Naturally, the idea of Julia leaving us sent Mandy and I into a fit of terror, and Julia had to calm us down, saying that at worst, she wouldn’t be able to get her act together for at least another six months, and it might realistically take her upwards of another year.

Now, within the expatriate community in Taipei (as, I imagine, is true with expatriate communities everywhere), there is the constant tremor of movement. Friendships become somewhat disposable, since no one seems to stay longer than a few years, the gap left in their absence filled by newer (and often younger) faces. I definitely consider myself an “old-timer”, having been in Taiwan for almost five years. In that time, I have forged a few true friendships, but I have found it increasingly difficult to expend the time and energy to maintain friendships with the more ephemeral people that I meet periodically.

I have always counted myself lucky to have known Mandy for as long as I have, and doubly blessed that she also decided to move to Taiwan, on more or less the same indefinite time schedule that I was working under. And when we found Julia, it seemed we were charmed. (As a friend said to me yesterday, finding a good roommate is just as hard as finding a good man.) But it doesn’t surprise me that Julia is considering returning to the US.

For Julia, the impetus to leave Taiwan was mostly driven by her guilt over being so far from her family. She had come to Taiwan, in part, to improve her Chinese, and, in part, to put some distance between herself and her mother. She was born in Corvalis, Oregon and had spent almost all of her life in the environs before coming to Taiwan. When she had been a high school senior, she had applied to schools all over the US, in hopes that acceptance to a good school somewhere outside of Oregon which would allow her to begin to satiate her wanderlust. She had gotten accepted to Wellesley, Michigan State, and UC Davis, but her mother insisted that she enroll at the University of Oregon, less than an hour away from her home.

Julia’s father had died from a heart attach when Julia was 15, leaving her mother the sole-caretaker of Julia and her two younger brothers. Julia’s father had left the family financially solvent, but Julia’s mother was simply unprepared to deal with the world without her husband. Julia’s parents had come to the US from Fukien a few years before Julia was born, and they settled in Corvalis because her uncle had opened a profitable Chinese restaurant in Portland and had helped them set up a similar restaurant in Corvalis. Julia had grown up without much parental guidance, since her parents spent almost every day at the restaurant, from opening to closing. She was the one responsible for bringing up her brothers; she was the one responsible for running the house. But even though Julia’s mother had spent over a decade cooking for her husband’s restaurant, she had never managed to learn much English outside of some very basic greetings and order-taking.

Julia had to take on the responsibility for settling her father’s estate at 15.

Once she left for college, Julia started to put some distance between herself and her mother. But she remained the visibly dutiful daughter: she went home nearly every weekend, and would help her mother take care of odd chores around the house. And she watched her brothers, one and then the other, graduate from high school and head for schools on the East Coast.

That is, until her senior year in college. That was the year she discovered Luna.

She had been dating a guy named Justin, apparently unmemorable except that he had the largest collection of CDs that Julia had ever seen. (Julia was the first of us to point out that every Chinese-American man seems to have some sort of “collection” that is their pride and joy. And although there is sometimes the absence of actual interest in the collectables, every one of these collecting men can number precisely the often staggering size of his “collection”.) Julia had never heard of half of the musicians in Justin’s collection, but she had started borrowing random selections to study to.

She had picked up Luna’s Bewitched CD because she was intrigued by the title and the cover (showing a close up of a man in an astronaut's helmet). And she was hypnotized by the music. Like a coffee virgin having her first Starbuck’s Caramel Macchiata coffee, she was hooked. She had been raised on classical music and a smattering of pop music, nothing which drew her and held her attention. Until she heard Luna, she had always assumed that music was best in the background, the noise accompanying dinners, study sessions, or a ride up an elevator. It was the mixture of adventure and spirit in Luna that captured her. She started tracking the threads of music out of Luna: the Velvet Underground, Galaxie 500, the Smiths, Yo La Tengo. A world of music that she had never had any exposure to before. And she discovered that for all the pedestrianism of Oregon, and Eugene, the one thing it did attract was a constant flow of alternative musicians passing through.

Outside of school work, Julia started spending all of her time going to concerts. She had a voracious appetite and an aptitude for appreciating this genre of music. She started working for the school's newspaper, covering the music scene, so that she could get free passes into the various shows. She started her own CD collection. She found friends that shared her passion. And she started fighting with her mother.

At first, Julia cut back her visits home to once every other week: that way she had some weekends free to attend concerts. But her visits gradually dwindled to once a month. When she did make it home, her mother would reprimand her, following her as she went about her chores and scolding her for being an ungrateful, undutiful daughter. When she didn't go home, her mother would shower her with phone calls, continuing the stream of verbal abuse. Finally, towards the end of her senior year, after Julia hadn't been home in two months, her mother showed up at her dorm one night.

In the three plus years that Julia had been at University, her mother had not once visited her daughter in Eugene. That night, Julia's mother threatened to withdraw Julia from school, to prevent her from graduating.

Julia stared at her mother and said in Chinese, without emotion, "Mother. You know perfectly well that father set up funds for each of us. That money has been ours to use since we turned 18. You may be my mother, but neither the school, nor anyone else, will pay attention to your silly demands. You can barely speak English, and you have no claims on me, or my education money, now that I'm legally an adult."

Julia watched her mother's face drain of color. Julia turned away, and heard the door closing behind her. By the time Julia looked out her dorm window, her mother was already nowhere in sight.

Julia's mother did not attend her graduation, though her brothers, back home for the summer, did. They pleaded with Julia to spend the summer repairing the damaged relationship between herself and their mother, but Julia had already secured a job with a non-profit organization in Portland, and she was moving there immediately after graduation.

***

After the restorative spa, skin glowing and hair cascading, we went to dinner at Mandy's favorite restaurant, Portofino's, on the corner of Tun Hua and Hsin Yi. We were joined by Elly and Dave, and three other friends, Cynthia, Cathy and Raymond. Dinner was delicious, and the conversation amusing. Of course, due to the preponderance of women at the table, the talk eventually gave way to a dissection of heterosexual men and their shortcomings. (Of course, present company were excluded from the generalization, since Dave has been a very good boyfriend to Elly and Raymond is gay.)

Cynthia mentioned that the same discussion was going on at a local website, HeyChristine.com, about the lack of date-able men in Taipei.

After dinner, we all went to VS (Vacuum Space), and we were dancing there until 1pm. Apparently, there was another birthday party being held there at the same time. There were a lot of hua-qiao (overseas Chinese) there with the other party and I recognized many of them (Taipei can be a very small place). VS turned into one large throbbing, merging mass, everyone grooving to the music. In between dancing, Julia and I made sure that Mandy imbibed her fair share of alcohol. [next entry]

2001-05-17T01:41:00.000-07:00

I woke up yesterday with a scalding headache. I felt disconnected from everything around me: my life and my environs. All I knew was that I was surrounded by the things I had spent a lifetime accumulating. Furniture, clothes, books, and meaningless toys upon toys, all created without care, carelessly purchased, and still packaged with a guarantee to infuse my life with a small piece of paradise. How blindly I had trusted them, and tried to buy my way into that dream. Oh, how I want the modern nirvana: I want to stagger the world with my brilliance and charm it with my well-executed modesty. I want to pursue a dream, fight the evil corporation by refusing to relinquish my soul for the promise of riches; then finding even greater wealth from the success of my genius endeavors. I want live in a spacious, tastefully decorated SoHo (ok, I’ll settle for Ren Ai) apartment. I want my world to be filled with beautiful, Hollywood-esque friends who are engagingly witty, subtly sarcastic, equipped with the perfect retort wrought with sexual innuendo, but all the while caring deeply about the environment, the plight of the mine victims in Cambodia and the fate of small furry endangered animals. I want the marketers, the advertisers, and the sellers to deliver their promises.

I want to live in the world of “Friends” or the movie “Cocktail”.

Instead, I substituted the emptiness with the triumph of seeing those cute Calvin Klein shoes on my feet as I trudged off to my modern-day nightmare to face a nightmare of a day.

Two “V.I.C.” (Very Important Clients) from Germany stopped in our office on their one day stop in Taipei. One was the Vice President of product development and the other, a sourcing manager for an up-scale, European cosmetics company. Since the company does some of its production in Taiwan (a line of perfumes, and a whole range of cosmetic accessories), they hired my firm to do most of the design work around the packaging as well as pre-production prototyping.

They were here this time to review a new line of compact cosmetic tools that are packed in convenient, packable holders. Think of a set of blusher, lipstick brush, tweezers, and eyelash curler packed in a silver hinged case that can be thrown into those cute little Fendi baguette purses.

I had whipped up models for each of the 10 different sets that were designed at the client’s head office and had been sent over about two week ago. Right after 2 hours of discussions over the external packaging, I brought these models out for their inspection. From my models, the clients were able to choose the three they liked best, and we had them packed up so that they could be brought to the production site. As impersonal as the models are, I always feel a sense of achievement when one of my models gets sent to the factory to be translated into an actual, mass manufactured product.

As usual, I stayed for the entire meeting, which ran through the entire morning, and then I accompanied the two clients, and my boss, to lunch. We ate at the Pearl Liang restaurant at the Grand Hyatt. My boss always takes his clients there for lunch so I know the menu fairly well. I read this as a lack of imagination on his part, but I can’t really complain – it is a free lunch.

The two customers were both women in their early 40s. They were both well groomed and dressed with a distinctly European flair. One woman, the V.P., was obviously the more extroverted and urbane of the two. She was wearing a long, cream colored, short sleeve silk knit top and black silk cigarette pants. Her top was cinched with a belt showing a silver Gucci “G” buckle. She was very animated at lunch, asking my boss and I all kinds of questions about Taiwan and bitching about the factories in her heavily accented English. The other woman, shorter with mousy brown hair, was silent for most of the meal, answering only when prodded by her superior. But she had been the more knowledgeable in the morning discussions, and had talked about the products animatedly. It was a bit surprising to see such a dramatic change in personality when a person was taken out of their “natural” work environment.

The rest of the day was uneventful. I played around with a graphics program on the computer that does some really great movable 3D images. I was trying to draw a dinosaur toy that I was going to sculpt in the afternoon, but decided to put off for another day.

Puff… puff… I had a cigarette last night just before I got home. I am a closet smokaholic! [next entry]