A matter of practicality

On the trip back from New York City, my friends and I got into a brief discussion about Taiwanese politics. Three Taiwanese girls from different backgrounds (whose parents had very very different political views), and one Chinese girl from mainland China.

The three Taiwanese explained to the Chinese girl that in Taiwanese politics there are two main parties, the pan-blue (KMT) and pan-green (DPP). They are usually caricutured as pro-unification and pro-independence. But our pan-blue representative in the car clarified that it's not pro-unification, but to keep the "status quo".

What is the "status quo"? It is the fact that Taiwan operates independently in governance, international trade, military, but stumbles around in diplomacy (and therefore international events). We have more military power than Japan, yet are forced to call ourselves "Chinese Taipei" in the olympics and other world games. We elect our own president, and legislature, yet only 23 countries have diplomatic ties with us. We have a very succesful national health care system that covers most everyone on the island, yet we cannot get a seat in the WHO, or the UN, or most other things for that matter.

The "status quo" is de-facto independence. So one could argue that both major parties in Taiwan are in favor of independence, and so are the majority of voters. What differs is their attitude towards relations with China. One side is more pragmatic (and at the same time slightly erring on the side of being a push-over). The other side takes a more confrontational stance, an attitude cultivated by starting out as an opposition party in a authoritarian environment.

The Chinese girl in our company was surprised: "well if there are only 23 countries that admit you are an official country, why is it easier for you Taiwanese to get visas for the United States and many European countries than it is for us?"

The answer is the world is pragmatic. People will in the end find a way for things to function despite the politics. Just like the fact that although it sucks to be called Chinese Taipei during the olympics, if that's the way we get to compete that's the way we'll do it, after all it's just a name.

And most of the time we feel all of the fuss about cross-strait relations is just politics, often mostly posturing and competition between China and the United States, and misuse for election purposes by our own local politicians. We real people have more practical things to worry about, such as what to eat for dinner.

Fiction

Sometimes I wonder about the distinction between fiction and non-fiction.

For which writer of fiction does not draw on life experiences and events real. And for writers of non-fiction that write about their own life experiences, do they not distort, cut, or edit to shape their stories into something more engaging?

Just some random thoughts from reading the wonderful essays from David Sedaris. Who I don't believe has a more interesting life than I do, just a more humorous writing style.

I've always envied people who are naturally funny. I want to be naturally funny.

Harvest

This is my first season gardening, and aside from the part where I have to pull weeds, it is quite fun. My roommate Amanda and I are sharing the garden, and both being novice gardeners, at the start of the season, we just stuck seeds in the ground and hoped for the best. Miraculously, half of the plants we sowed grew, even though we couldn’t really tell what they were when they first started.

I squeal with delight when I see a plant growing happily in the sun. And when I see a small fruit, in the form of zucchini or pepper, drawing nutrients from the plant and slowly expanding, I am in awe of how these plant things manage to convert sun energy into such a tangible form. I have derived so much joy from just admiring how big and leafy our garden is that I don’t know what I will do when winter time comes and I won’t have a garden to visit anymore.

And of course my excitement was hard to contain when we first started getting zucchini, luffa and peas in our garden three weeks ago. I stood and gazed at the fruits, and said adoringly, “Oh, you are soooo cute.” Other than zucchini and luffa, we have planted green beans, peas, bell peppers, tomatoes, kale, brussel sprouts, and eggplant.

The peas had shown up quite awhile ago, and Amanda and I were unsure as to when we were allowed to harvest them, and so we gently tugged on a few, and since they were stubbornly stuck to their vines, we assumed they were not ready to come off, and decided to wait a bit longer. Then, a week ago, the plant started dying. One day after watering the garden, I reported to Amanda that this was happening, and we were both at loss to what the cause could be, because we diligently watered our garden every day.

I ended up asking my friend I-chun, a seasoned gardener (well, 3 seasons I think, but she does have horticulture degree), what was going on. She laughed and said peas are an early plant, and we should harvest the peas if they are big enough to eat. So the conclusion is they are probably done bearing fruit, and we should salvage whatever is left. Amused, she also asked how our luffa was doing. I-chun had been kind enough to give us leftover seedlings of luffa. I proudly said that one of the plants had survived, and there was a large luffa growing on it. I-Chun was promptly envious because all her luffa plants in her own plot had died.

A few hours later, I get a call from I-Chun who tells me that she and her husband went to see how our luffa was doing. And they ended up laughing so hard that a neighboring gardener commented: “well, I’m glad your garden makes you so happy.” It turns out that our luffa is not a luffa but a cucumber. So now I have a gigantic cucumber in my fridge.

(In my defense, this cucumber was spiky and had rough skin… )

In a panic, I went to my garden after her call, and decided to harvest whatever looked big enough to eat to avoid other vegetables having the same fate. I plucked a few pounds of green string beans, some more zucchini, and my gigantic cucumber. Next to the zucchini was a zucchini-like plant with a gigantic round heavy green fruit growing on it. I decided, better safe than sorry, and plucked it off it’s vine. Then I started wondering what it was…

Again I called I-Chun and described my latest harvest. She asked: Is it round? Does the plant sort of grow vine-like with large leaves that look like zucchini? Yes, yes and yes. That’s a pumpkin. She concluded.

Okay, so now I have a green pumpkin in addition to a cucumber as large as my forearm. Ah, the joys of gardening.

TIMER

I watched the movie TIMER last night on netflix instant play. It’s a romantic comedy with a science fiction element. I’ve been avoiding romantic comedies lately, they are too predictable, and they predictably make me feel depressed.

In the movie, there is a new technology that people can implant into their wrists, which is a timer that counts down, days, hours, minutes, until when you will meet your soulmate. Your One. And then when you see each other it beeps. According to the studies, 95% of people are happy with their eventual soulmate. Of course this can be both liberating and debilitating at the same time. Would we have relationships? Treat relationships differently when we have such a timer? Would you allow yourself to fall in love, make detours from your destiny?

The protagonist Oona (a very cool name) is nearing thirty, and she is in a panic that her timer has not started counting down, and so she goes around finding guys that have no timers, dating them, and then taking them to get a timer installed (and then they discover they are not soul mates and part ways). Her sister Steph has a timer that says she will meet her soulmate when she is 43, so meanwhile she is trying to pass her time by having meaningless sex.

Something about their predicament resonates with me… and reminds me of all my single girlfriends… we are not the young college girls we were, and thirty does not seem that far away from where we are standing- there is something scary about that number, maybe it’s that when we were little girls, 9 or 10, we imagined that everything would be settled by the time we were 30. (because that seemed really old at the time, and it’s a round number.) So we probably had this picture in our little heads of having a good career, nice husband, a house, a dog, and possibly even a baby.

And for some of my friends, they are on their way to that reality. But then for the rest of us single gals, things are still a confusing mess: we date a bunch of guys wondering if we are wasting our time and the other person’s time, we leap into relationships giving our best, but nevertheless getting our hearts broken, and we keep hoping for that magical someday when we will meet a person who is right for us.

As for me, sometimes I don’t feel I know myself well enough, or know what I want well enough to recognize my soulmate(s) when I see him/her. And I don’t know if that idyllic picture I painted for myself when I was younger is what I am aiming for.

But wouldn’t it be nice to have a timer? It would take all the guessing and disappointment out of this process. I would not have to wonder whether or not I’d be single forever- if that was my destiny, I would know. Wouldn’t that make life easier? The movie shows us that although with the TIMER the dynamics of dating have shifted, humans are still complicated, and the timer doesn’t necessarily make life easier.

And I guess if we look at life and love in the context of ONE soulmate or ONE destiny it makes everything else seem like detours. But if we didn’t have this process of learning and getting hurt, life would be much less interesting. As Mikey says in the movie: “Life is all about detours.”

And gradually, I’ve come to recognize that life is not a romantic comedy, the goal is not a happy ending. The only ending to life is death, and before that every moment is precious and contains all the wonderful confusing qualities that are rarely captured by movies of this type.

Lucky

(Written on June 8th, 2010)

It’s my last evening in Torino, and I think I’m going to miss this place. I’m going to miss the smell of fresh bread from bakeries on every block, I’m going to miss the bustling street markets where I was too chicken to buy anything because I did not know Italian, I’m going to miss the wonderful espresso and perfect cappuccino that come in small cups (and no paper-cup-to-go monstrosities here!), I’m going to miss the fruity flavors of gelato and my excuse to have all the sugar I want… I think I’m even going to miss using badly pronounced Italian words and hand gestures to communicate.

Admittedly, there were some evenings when I felt extremely depressed and alone. The best places on Earth just aren’t fun without friends and people you love. But this was temporary, and I am glad I had to take on this solitude. It has made me stronger.

And I feel like such a lucky girl. As I sit on the bus to the train station to buy my bus ticket to the airport, I literally count my blessings. I am lucky to have such a nice collaborator to invite me here, and he was such a wonderful host. I am so lucky to have a generous advisor who encouraged me to come here. I am lucky to be a carefree grad student who can focus on her project and not worry about funding students or experiments. I am so very lucky to be young and healthy and have enough money to enjoy sightseeing and food and all these nice experiences.

Even things that irked me at the time… as I count I find that these irritations only happened because I have so much. That I am so truly blessed. I am thankful for the occasions my work made me confused, because that meant I had new problems to solve. I am thankful for the way my feet ached for 3 days after seeing Rome, a sign that I had made every effort to see Rome, and that my legs were strong enough to take me around. I am lucky I had the luxury to agonize over whether or not to purchase all those pretty things in the shops, because it means I am able to afford pretty things. I am glad that I had to travel alone, because it means I am still unattached, unmarried, and don’t have children, because I recognize that this time of freedom (probably?!?) won’t last forever. I am thankful for the language barrier, because I had to rebuild courage to communicate, a quality I’d have never thought I lacked. And I am happy that I feel sad to be leaving, because this means I have enjoyed my time here, and it also means I am going home (as defined to be the place we live most of time)!