The Ants Go Marching

Have you ever sung the song "The ants go marching two by two hurrah, hurrah...?" well I sing it regularly here on this side of the globe, in fact, everytime I return to this house. I don't sing it for amusement. I sing it in frustration. I also change the words and sing "The ants go marching ten by ten" or sometimes I change it to "one hundred by one hundred" depending on how many ants have decided it's nicer inside our house than outside and have rallied their forces and multitudes to take over the house.

Actually it's not just ants. I remember a spider the size of my hand that we found hibernating in a corner of my room near the head of my bed. We vaccumed that one up, but of course more returned to take its place.

Anyway, I'm not complaining as much as trying to come to terms with the fact that I live in a not so tame part of the world right now and this is one of those things that comes with living close to nature - sometimes you're so close there is no separation.

But a quick update on other matters of interest. Today, being Sunday (I'm lagging behind the times of my fellow friends in Taipei, which is sad except on Sundays, because that means you're already on Monday :) anyway, so today wasn't very eventful, was what I wanted to say. I spent some time on paperwork, preparing to mail it off in the morning, and looked at the online program for taxes. That was exciting.

Now I am deciding it's time for some sleep. I think I mentioned how I hate to ever admit to any sort of jetlag, but I suppose I have had a touch of jetlag, seeing as how I was wide awake at 4 am this morning for no apparent reason. So I took advantage of the time to finish off a book, and then I went back to sleep.

Now it is 10 pm and I am decidedly ready for bed. I am thankful that I only had 2 days of wanting to go to bed before 6 pm. My schedule seems to be adjusting nicely, although wouldn't you know it, in two days I shall again experience a time difference, this time of a few hours, and then the time will officially change, and then I shall change time zones again. Translation: I shall be very confused by the end of this month.

Well that's all for now. Until next time :)

Transitioning

So far my catapulting myself onto another continent and changing lifestyles, countries, and culture in less than 24 hours, hasn't been too difficult. It certainly helps to be with family in a familiar place.

Right now it's almost midnight on my new side of the world, and I am eating a sandwich and wondering if I will be tired soon. I made the mistake of going to bed around 5:45 pm, fully intending to wake up at 6:30 and get ready to go for vespers at 7:00. Well I did wake up at 6:30, but I couldn't get my eyes to open fully and my brain to fully turn on and comprehend anything, so I gave up and went back to sleep after eating a couple chocolate brownies.

When I finally started getting restless enough to wake up, I was sure I had slept most of the night. Wrong. It was only 11 pm. I checked my clock again - perhaps it was still on Taiwanese time and it was really 7 am or something, but nope, it was 11 pm. 'Oh goody' I thought to myself. 'Now what do I do?'

So I got up and made a sandwich and checked facebook, of course, because what else do people do at midnight when they can't sleep?

I think next on my list is read a book or write about how tiring it is to keep changing continents. Wait, I'm doing that now.

Oh yes, I can tell you about my first day back. I will say it's lovely to be with family. Home is where you find parts of yourself staring back at you from different faces. That's family. You have uncanny similarities and you belong. It's nice to have that feeling of belonging when you've been a nomad for a while.

Well yesterday we made our way into town, about a half hour drive, and I got to try a new restaurant that was highly recommended to me. It was interesting. We stepped in the door and the two people at the counter looked at us and I immediately thought of saying "liang wei" or "two people." I bit my tongue before the Chinese words escaped my lips. After we were seated we were given a menu the size of a photo book. I began to feel overwhelmed. I'm not used to this many choices on a menu. So I began my search of what to eat, first by looking at food prices. When I started to convert the prices into NT dollars to figure out how much they really were, that's when I realised how much of an influence living in Taipei has had on me. It used to be I always converted NT into USD but now it seems I'm now doing the opposite.

I'm not sure if it was the lovely sunny weather, the warm temperatures, or the nice long drive in the car, or even the lovely fried food we ate for lunch, but by the time we reached home mid-afternoon, I was barely awake. I sat on the sofa watching a British comedy for just over an hour before I finally gave up fighting the battle with my drooping eyelids and finally headed off to my bed where I promptly fell asleep and was dead to the world for the next hour, until I woke up, had my chocolate snack, and then went back to sleep again.

I think I shall end my update here. I might actually be starting to get sleepy again. That would be nice. I wasn't exactly thrilled with the idea of trying to fill hours of extra time in the middle of the night. I like to brag that I never really get jetlag, and I fully intend to continue with that theme, so off I go to get (another) good night's sleep :)

Until next time :)

Update from Tokyo

Hi! So to my friends in Taipei - I miss you!! As soon as I arrived at the Taipei airport it hit me that I was really leaving, and on the airplane I kept telling myself "I'll be back" so I would feel better. I miss you guys.

So I've made it home, just in case you were wondering and hadn't seen my update on facebook while I took advantage of the free internet at every airport except Narita, Tokyo, where they don't have free internet in Terminal 1. But in Tokyo while I was busy relaxing, waiting for my connecting flight, I had some time to write a small update on my last few hours in Taipei - memorable ones for me for a few reasons.

For one, I got to eat out for supper with friends, and for another, I got another scooter ride, and those two by themselves would've made my last night in Taipei memorable enough, but somehow I guess I had to keep up my tradition of not doing things the "normal" way, so I ended up with a bit more adventure then just arriving home safely and sleeping soundly until my alarm woke me up. Maybe I should just explain.

Here's what I wrote in Tokyo....

Hi Everyone! I am still in Asia as I write this. If you are ever in Narita airport, I highly recommend Terminal 1's plublic lounge on the lower floor. they have this large lounge with a TV and reclining chairs and bathrooms and gate monitors so you can watch your gate to see when everyone gets up to board. It's great!

Anyway, so I'm sitting here relaxing and thinking how nice it was to have a comfortable plane to fly with over here, and I only hope my next flight of about 8 hours will be half as comfortable. I hope I will be able to sleep (that didn't really happen; I only dozed for an hour or two).

Despite having enough time to pack everything before leaving, I still managed to get only about 4 hours of sleep the night before I left, so now my eyes are red and I look like a night owl who drank too much coffee and had a nightmare. Or something like that.

So last night after going for a supper with a couple friends at this all-vegetarian restaurant where the menu was all in Chinese and I could barely read the strange font they had used, we scootered back to my place where I piled things on top of my friend to take for me while I was gone, like a slow cooker and a box of snack food I still had (thanks by the way! really appreciate it :) Then I hailed a taxi and sped off to another friend's house with an additional two suitcases, a bag of miscellaneous household odds and ends, and an ironing board. By this time it was around 10 pm and I was cringing inside as I watched the minutes tick away because another friend had been waiting to meet me for a couple hours already.

My friendly taxi driver checked to make sure my friend was going to help me carry my heavy suitcase up and then drove off.

We managed to drag my super heavy suitcase up the stairs o the second floor (thank goodness it wasn't the 7^th floor) and I stayed for a few minutes to say hello and goodbye, and then flew out the door to meet another friend a few minutes away to say bye.

This is when things started to get interesting. First, I didn't see my friend at the MRT exit. Then, when I tried to call her, I realised I didn't have my phone with me. I racked my brains trying to think of where I could have possibly put my phone in the last 10 minutes since leaving the taxi, and I finally remembered putting it in a plastic bag … the same plastic bag that was now sitting happily in my friend's house, on the second floor of a tall apartment building, with a locked front door and no guard to open it for anyone. I had no way to get in from the outside. With no key, no guard to help me open the door, and no phone to call my friend to open the door for me, I was stuck. With no phone, I had no phone numbers of people to call. Except for my own. Now this is where I suggest this as the best example of why you should memorise your own cellphone number.

After realising that I could call myself,  and hopefully my friend would answer my phone for me, I went back into the station to find a phone. The first phone I found required some credit card I did not have or didn't know I had. The second phone was at the other end of the station, so I dashed back to that end, but realised it only accepted 1, 5, or 10 NT coints. I only had two 50 NT coins. I thought dismally of the bag of coins I had been collecting over the past 6 months that was sitting on my bedroom desk. This would have been the perfect time to use those coins, only of course, they were in my room where I had no use for them.

I contemplated asking someone to help me change my 50 NT but before I got around to it I found out that there are machines in the MRT station that take your bills and change them into coins (for no extra charge thankfully). So I happily put in my 100 NT bill inside, and received … two 50 NT coins... just what I didn't need.

So I tried the next machine, hoping it had more options. No such luck. It was well past 10 pm by now, but I still didn't have a way to contact my friend.

So I dashed back to the other side of the station to the information desk and asked for change there. Then I half ran, half dragged myself back again to the phone with my coins and put my first 10 NT in.

I tried dialling what I knew was my number. Nothing. The number was busy or out of service. I had made a mistake in my dialling. My first 10 NT  was gone. I couldn't remember which number you had to press to call out and since my phone number began with 2 of the numbers for the fire department, I was afraid I might dial one of the emergency numbers like the fire station :) So I tried a second time, and tried a different code to reach my phone. Still nothing. This time my coin came back. Whew. I didn't have to run back for more change yet.

I tried dialling again. No luck. I tried another time and got an answering machine. I finally tried again, and it started to ring. After two rings I heard a voice on the other end of the line saying “hello?” I responded “Hello?” and my friend said, “Is this [my name]? Your phone is in my house, and you're friend is looking for you! Where are you now?”

What a relief to hear her voice! I told her I was only 2 minutes away and I ran back to her house and met her coming out to meet me.After retreiving my phone, thanking her profusely, and saying goodbye again, I again dashed through the station to the other side where my other friend was waiting to meet me. Finally after explaining and apologising, we went somewhere for some tea I had never tried before. By now it was close to 11 pm. We chatted for a half hour before parting ways, and I hurridly made my way home, arriving back in my room close to midnight. I still had some final packing and cleaning to do before I would be finally ready for bed. After just over an hour I finally tumbled into bed and set my alarm for 4 hours later...

Needless to say, I will not forget my last night in Taipei. I will not forget my last morning in Taipei either. I decided last minute to try taking the HSR for the first time :) Don't ask me why I decided this, except that I heard it would save me time, and I really valued sleeping as much as possible in the morning, and since my flight left at 9 in the morning, I wasn't too thrilled about an hour bus ride to the airport. So, I decided to try this high speed train and bus combination for the first time.

Thankfully it was very easy to manage. I don't know what I would've done if I had gotten lost or had to wander around finding my bus. But everything was so convient and I made it to the airport in time to check in and find my gate, with 10 minutes to spare before they began boarding :) yes, I only waited about 10 minutes. Just enough time to look around, check facebook and update my status, and decide I would sit down if they didn't start boarding.

Taking the HSR only gets you to Taoyuan so you need to take a bus to the airport, but thankfully the bus is right outside the station and the signs are easy to spot and you don't have to wait very long for the bus. This saved me from missing my plane :)

The one thing I remember about the bus ride over was one of those suitcases with four wheels that you can just roll along with you as you walk without having to tilt and pull it behind you. A lady had brought one of these rolling suitcases onto the bus, and about 5minutes into our quiet ride, the bus made a lurch to the right, and her suitcase began travelling in the same direction, rolling and picking up speed until it slammed against the side door. A gentleman jumped up and grabbed the suitcase and put it firmly back in place, where it stayed obediently until the next sharp turn, where it again began rolling wildly, and again slammed into the side door. The same gentleman jumped up again and rolled the suitcase back to where it was supposed to be, while the owner, a young lady, looked on gratefullly. The man finally decided the suitcase could not be trusted to stay in place by itself so he just held on to it for the rest of the 15 minute trip, that is, until the bus made another major turn and suddenly a small orange suitcase started flying through the air in the same direction. An older gentleman jumped up to grab the runaway case and laid it on its side. I kept an eye on things from my seat two rows behind, and the minute I saw my suitcase begin to move I too jumped up and sailed through the air, catching my suitcase before it rammed a hole into the door of the bus. Not sure why they haven't installed luggage racks into these buses yet...

*****

Well, that's my story, so far. I will keep you posted on what happens next. Right now I will go to bed. Tomorrow morning I have an interview to see about a job (not sure which job yet), and I also plan to send off my application tomorrow or Monday, depending on how coherent I am in the morning. I began the application today but my eyes couldn't focus so I lay down for a 'short nap' and didn't wake up until 3 hours later. I feel better for the rest though. It was a long 20 hour journey and I am glad to be back on solid ground for a while.

Until next time :)