I opened my mouth, and shut it again. Recalibrated. Opened it again. "Careful!"
It happened first with the ubiquitous "mmn"; then "thank you," I think, and spread quickly to "really?" and "yeah!": in my mind, they existed first and foremost in Chinese. Someone gives me something? 謝謝 (Xie xie)! Someone says something unbelievable? 真的嗎 (Zhen de ma)? I need to confirm that something is correct? "mmn" or 對阿 (dui aa) will do the job just fine.
小心 (xiao xin) as my go-to word is new for me, though, and it has the advantage (?) over the others of concerning situations in which you really don't have time to translate before speaking. If you're telling someone to be careful, you usually need to do so immediately--and, really, that's the reason why 小心 made its way into my vocabulary in the first place: being an elementary school teacher gives you ample times when you need to caution people quickly, and be sure that they understand you.
We talked in our Fulbright sessions earlier this year about the tenets of language learning; one of the goals towards which we strive as English teachers is for English words to come naturally. This is referred to in the language teaching community as automaticity. And yes, automaticity is great, and yes, I'm more than a little excited that, for some words at least, Chinese has supplanted English in my mind.
But when, as happened in Australia, I found myself about to caution someone in Chinese, I started wondering about the dangers of these substitutions. No wonder second (or third, or whatever) languages are lost so easily if you don't use them! Seems to me like a natural defense mechanism: if you hold a rarely-used language at the forefront of your mind, you run the risk of not being able to communicate with those around you at a moment's notice--and that is, after all, the main purpose for which language was developed.
I'd just like to take this moment to apologize in advance to all my friends in America, for the moments when Chinese will almost certainly slip from my mouth instead of English. Just give me a few months and, I'm sure, I'll recalibrate.
Showing posts with label Australia. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Australia. Show all posts
Monday, July 9, 2012
Thursday, July 5, 2012
Adventures in Internationalism
This morning, I cuddled a koala in Cairns and chatted with a girl from South Korea. An hour ago, I ordered a full set meal out of a vending machine in Osaka. I then walked to a 7-11 to use the ATM, and came back with a Starbucks drink called "Seattle latte". And then, a few minutes ago, I checked my Facebook and Gmail to see that I had new contacts from new-made friends from Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden, Belgium and New Zealand waiting for me--and that beside the constant stream of new requests from my Taiwanese students.
This random interlocking of different people, locales and customs might just be my favorite thing about international travel, and, from what I've seen of it, at least, of solo travel specifically. When you're traveling in a group it's easy and natural to stay in that group; when you're traveling alone, you can't help but reach out, see new things, meet new people, and get a much fuller sense of the world as a result.
This is just a short post--it's 11:45pm here in Japan, and I have to leave my hostel by 6am tomorrow if I want to make my flight on time (which I do)--but I thought I'd take advantage of my free Wifi here to make a quick note on my travels, and shed light on why my travels are only just beginning.
 |
| I ordered this... |
 |
| ...using this. |
 |
| Tomorrow morning, I will discover what Japan thinks a Seattle Latte tastes like. Hooray! |
This random interlocking of different people, locales and customs might just be my favorite thing about international travel, and, from what I've seen of it, at least, of solo travel specifically. When you're traveling in a group it's easy and natural to stay in that group; when you're traveling alone, you can't help but reach out, see new things, meet new people, and get a much fuller sense of the world as a result.
This is just a short post--it's 11:45pm here in Japan, and I have to leave my hostel by 6am tomorrow if I want to make my flight on time (which I do)--but I thought I'd take advantage of my free Wifi here to make a quick note on my travels, and shed light on why my travels are only just beginning.
Tuesday, July 3, 2012
Automated Dive Message
*Beeeep!*
You have reached the automated voice mailbox of BEKAH. The person you're trying to read about is not available at the moment, as she IS OFF ON A DIVE BOAT AND/OR SCUBA DIVING ABOUT THE GREAT BARRIER REEF. If you'd like to leave a message, please do so by posting a comment. If not, please be informed that regular answering and posting services will resume TOMORROW. Thank you!
*Beeeep!*
You have reached the automated voice mailbox of BEKAH. The person you're trying to read about is not available at the moment, as she IS OFF ON A DIVE BOAT AND/OR SCUBA DIVING ABOUT THE GREAT BARRIER REEF. If you'd like to leave a message, please do so by posting a comment. If not, please be informed that regular answering and posting services will resume TOMORROW. Thank you!
*Beeeep!*
Monday, July 2, 2012
An Experiment in Single Travel
Bus bay 6 was empty. You've got to be kidding me. My plane had landed an hour earlier, at 5:35am, and I had scheduled a pick up--had they left without me? Sleep deprived from my 14 hours of travel, I couldn't bring myself to ask someone when I didn't even know the name of the shuttle--why hadn't I written that down??--so I ponied up and paid to use the Wifi in the lobby, only to discover that, yep, I'd put the the time down right, and nope, this shuttle bus--unimaginatively named Cairns Airport Shuttle--had no one in the lobby or the bus bay. Time to make the call.
But as I awaited my driver, having been assured over the phone that he would be there in 10 minutes (oddly enough, the same amount of time it takes to get to the airport from the heart of Cairns...), I felt my frustrations slipping away as I looked around and realized: I was in Australia. It was dawn, and as I stood waiting I heard a chorus of songbirds, all calling to each other in trills and tralls I'd never heard before; one, landing in the deserted bay beside me, began a complicated dance, its white-tipped tail swinging from side to side as if unhinged from its black body as it hopped about the concrete, eying me with benign curiosity. The sky was turning orange, turning my bird friends to idealized silhouettes, as the bus finally pulled up and I set off to my hostel.
A bit of a rough start to my first-ever solo vacation, maybe, but the morning proved beautiful, though strange. I couldn't check in right away--it was 7am, after all--so I set off toward the Cairns waterfront, where the sun had just risen to reveal a beautiful bay, flanked by a "Caution: salt-water crocodiles" sign and a surprisingly well-used (for 7am) wooden promenade, where I alternately strolled and sat, just soaking up the view. After 14 hours in transit, it was a lot to handle.
So, somewhat surprisingly, were the people. Having lived in Taiwan for the past 11 months, I had laughingly referred to my resultant uneasiness in large groups of "foreigners," but I didn't really anticipate it actually having a serious impact on me once I was back in a Western country. But it did.
The best way I can describe it is that I felt as I imagine autistic people feel when viewing the world: completely overstimulated to the point that I was slightly freaked out even to talk to the people around me. The very thing I'd most mourned being able to do in my time abroad, share a (potentially meaningless) little conversation with someone, now seemed impossibly difficult.
And then there were the accents. I've always been a lover of foreign accents, be they British, Australian, Kiwi, South African--I'm not picky; as long as it doesn't sound like mine, every accent is fantastic. I've never had much trouble understanding them, either--seemed pretty straightforward. But now, dumped in Australia, I felt myself straining to understand the people I spoke with--we were speaking the same language, I knew, but then why was it taking my brain so long to process? Another instance of my Taiwanese experience conspiring against me: I'd become an expert in understanding "Taiwanese English," but at the apparent cost of understanding every other native English dialect beside my own.
At the end of the promenade, I ate alone at a little cafe from which I could just catch a glimpse of the ocean, sitting with my Kindle version of The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (yes, that is my holiday reading of choice at the moment) as I munched on an overpriced ham-and-cheese croissant and pondered how it would be, a week of meals alone with my inner monologue and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.
As it turned out, not all that solitary. By 10:30, I was checked into my room, a gorgeous girls-only dorm with eight beds built into the walls so that there was a dividing wall between two sets of four; mine lay in the back bottom corner, and was a cozy cave double. Absolutely fantastic. So, too, were my roommates. Over the course of the day, I met them all: Kim, a Brit who was living and working in Cairns; Melanie, a Dutch girl finishing her Masters in Adelaide; Heidi, a Swiss girl (yes, really) who had just finished a study abroad; Johanna, a German girl living in Australia; Kat and Laura, two Brits from Liverpool here on holiday; and Katherine, a fellow American who had recently moved to Australia from, of all places, Portland, Oregon.
For all of its solo ventures (meals, grocery shopping, finalizing my dive school registration), my first day was a day with a surprisingly large amount of companionship.
And that, once I got past my reverse culture shock and airplane exhaustion, has been the best story of my so-called solo journey: surprising and wonderful companionship with strangers. The girls in my dorm, the people in my dive class (Michael, a Belgian; Ellen, a Swede; Jeroen, a Dutchman; two Germans, Natalie and Lars; Anja, a German Kiwi; and Amber, an Aussie (13 years old!))--we all got to just chat, even about inconsequential things, and it's been lovely. So far, at least, my experiment in single travel has not been altogether single--and that suits me just fine.
But as I awaited my driver, having been assured over the phone that he would be there in 10 minutes (oddly enough, the same amount of time it takes to get to the airport from the heart of Cairns...), I felt my frustrations slipping away as I looked around and realized: I was in Australia. It was dawn, and as I stood waiting I heard a chorus of songbirds, all calling to each other in trills and tralls I'd never heard before; one, landing in the deserted bay beside me, began a complicated dance, its white-tipped tail swinging from side to side as if unhinged from its black body as it hopped about the concrete, eying me with benign curiosity. The sky was turning orange, turning my bird friends to idealized silhouettes, as the bus finally pulled up and I set off to my hostel.
A bit of a rough start to my first-ever solo vacation, maybe, but the morning proved beautiful, though strange. I couldn't check in right away--it was 7am, after all--so I set off toward the Cairns waterfront, where the sun had just risen to reveal a beautiful bay, flanked by a "Caution: salt-water crocodiles" sign and a surprisingly well-used (for 7am) wooden promenade, where I alternately strolled and sat, just soaking up the view. After 14 hours in transit, it was a lot to handle.
So, somewhat surprisingly, were the people. Having lived in Taiwan for the past 11 months, I had laughingly referred to my resultant uneasiness in large groups of "foreigners," but I didn't really anticipate it actually having a serious impact on me once I was back in a Western country. But it did.
The best way I can describe it is that I felt as I imagine autistic people feel when viewing the world: completely overstimulated to the point that I was slightly freaked out even to talk to the people around me. The very thing I'd most mourned being able to do in my time abroad, share a (potentially meaningless) little conversation with someone, now seemed impossibly difficult.
And then there were the accents. I've always been a lover of foreign accents, be they British, Australian, Kiwi, South African--I'm not picky; as long as it doesn't sound like mine, every accent is fantastic. I've never had much trouble understanding them, either--seemed pretty straightforward. But now, dumped in Australia, I felt myself straining to understand the people I spoke with--we were speaking the same language, I knew, but then why was it taking my brain so long to process? Another instance of my Taiwanese experience conspiring against me: I'd become an expert in understanding "Taiwanese English," but at the apparent cost of understanding every other native English dialect beside my own.
At the end of the promenade, I ate alone at a little cafe from which I could just catch a glimpse of the ocean, sitting with my Kindle version of The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (yes, that is my holiday reading of choice at the moment) as I munched on an overpriced ham-and-cheese croissant and pondered how it would be, a week of meals alone with my inner monologue and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.
 |
| Pictured: A WESTERN MEAL! Not pictured (behind the sun flare): the ocean |
For all of its solo ventures (meals, grocery shopping, finalizing my dive school registration), my first day was a day with a surprisingly large amount of companionship.
And that, once I got past my reverse culture shock and airplane exhaustion, has been the best story of my so-called solo journey: surprising and wonderful companionship with strangers. The girls in my dorm, the people in my dive class (Michael, a Belgian; Ellen, a Swede; Jeroen, a Dutchman; two Germans, Natalie and Lars; Anja, a German Kiwi; and Amber, an Aussie (13 years old!))--we all got to just chat, even about inconsequential things, and it's been lovely. So far, at least, my experiment in single travel has not been altogether single--and that suits me just fine.
Sunday, July 1, 2012
Unemployed Fulbright Alum
As of today, I am no longer a Fulbright grantee. I am, instead, an unemployed Fulbright alumnus. And, well--so far so good.
I am in Australia now, discovering just how much English I've forgotten over the year (example from 10 minutes ago: "doved?" "diven?" *pause to think* WOW okay "dived"), and meeting scads of people from everywhere from the Netherlands to Germany to Belgium to Sweden to the UK...pretty much getting a full-on European tour just by staying in my hostel and talking to people, really. And, so far, my experiment in solo travel has been absolutely lovely--wonderful roommates, wonderful dive class, wonderful blessings coming my way, ranging from having simply wonderful dorm-mates and a great hostel to getting an AMAZING deal on a dive class/trip--I was given a 300-dollar full-day upgrade for free.
One unfortunate downside of blogging, I've come to realize, is that when I write everything that happens to me, I have no new stories to tell people when they ask me how (insert place/event/"life" here) has been. So that, combined with the fact that I don't have a converter to charge my computer here, and that I'll soon be on a dive boat with no Internet access anyway, means I won't be posting every detail of my trip. Besides, my grant is over! I don't remember when I made the decision to post daily, and I definitely never said when that little experiment in prolific writing will end; it would seem logical to be done now that my grant is. But I think I'll keep pegging away at it, probably, until I come home. And I'll be home soon enough (whether "home" in this instance means Taiwan or USA, both are true), and when you ask me now I'll have fresh tales to tell!
In the meantime, this is more of an explanatory post than anything else. I'm going to try to set up postings for the next few days which will publish at a pre-determined time, so I can stick to this one-a-day format until I'm back in the States, but don't expect too much from them. Or from me--after all, I'm now just an unemployed hostel rat chilling out in Australia.
I am in Australia now, discovering just how much English I've forgotten over the year (example from 10 minutes ago: "doved?" "diven?" *pause to think* WOW okay "dived"), and meeting scads of people from everywhere from the Netherlands to Germany to Belgium to Sweden to the UK...pretty much getting a full-on European tour just by staying in my hostel and talking to people, really. And, so far, my experiment in solo travel has been absolutely lovely--wonderful roommates, wonderful dive class, wonderful blessings coming my way, ranging from having simply wonderful dorm-mates and a great hostel to getting an AMAZING deal on a dive class/trip--I was given a 300-dollar full-day upgrade for free.
One unfortunate downside of blogging, I've come to realize, is that when I write everything that happens to me, I have no new stories to tell people when they ask me how (insert place/event/"life" here) has been. So that, combined with the fact that I don't have a converter to charge my computer here, and that I'll soon be on a dive boat with no Internet access anyway, means I won't be posting every detail of my trip. Besides, my grant is over! I don't remember when I made the decision to post daily, and I definitely never said when that little experiment in prolific writing will end; it would seem logical to be done now that my grant is. But I think I'll keep pegging away at it, probably, until I come home. And I'll be home soon enough (whether "home" in this instance means Taiwan or USA, both are true), and when you ask me now I'll have fresh tales to tell!
In the meantime, this is more of an explanatory post than anything else. I'm going to try to set up postings for the next few days which will publish at a pre-determined time, so I can stick to this one-a-day format until I'm back in the States, but don't expect too much from them. Or from me--after all, I'm now just an unemployed hostel rat chilling out in Australia.
Monday, June 18, 2012
That moment when...
Life is full of little moments. Usually, they end up in a Twitter hashtag. But I don't have Twitter. So, I give you, live from my blog, the little moments of my day. Including that moment when...
#you wake up with a sore throat, despite feeling fine the day before, and become terrified that you won't be allowed to SCUBA dive on your fast-approaching trip to Australia.
#you find yourself unexpectedly not that sore after a day of dragonboat practice.
#you go to dragonboat practice and realize your soreness was just hiding, waiting for the time when you'd ask the same muscles to do the same thing in front of dozens of people...because that's SO much more fun!
#you get shave ice with your dragonboat team and find yourself wondering how many more shave ices you'll get before you leave...
#you eat your last meal with a good friend who you might not see again before you leave...
#you have to say goodbye to a good friend who you might not see again before you leave...
#you finish writing 150 goodbye cards in just a few hours, and end up with exactly ONE card to spare.
#you actually have the TV on at the moment that the movie you'd wanted to remember to watch is playing.
#your dad is home at the same time that you're awake, and answers Skype, so you can wish him "Happy Father's Day."
#you hear a dog barking out of an apartment window and realize you just walked into a scene from Disney's animated 101 Dalmations.
#you go into a 7-11 and see it being used as a 7-11 in America would be: by big, burly men with late-night munchies, buying food from a bored-looking middle-aged man.
#you realize that writing daily blogs that are actually original and worthwhile is exhausting and impossible.
#you wake up with a sore throat, despite feeling fine the day before, and become terrified that you won't be allowed to SCUBA dive on your fast-approaching trip to Australia.
#you find yourself unexpectedly not that sore after a day of dragonboat practice.
#you go to dragonboat practice and realize your soreness was just hiding, waiting for the time when you'd ask the same muscles to do the same thing in front of dozens of people...because that's SO much more fun!
#you get shave ice with your dragonboat team and find yourself wondering how many more shave ices you'll get before you leave...
#you eat your last meal with a good friend who you might not see again before you leave...
#you have to say goodbye to a good friend who you might not see again before you leave...
#you finish writing 150 goodbye cards in just a few hours, and end up with exactly ONE card to spare.
#you actually have the TV on at the moment that the movie you'd wanted to remember to watch is playing.
#your dad is home at the same time that you're awake, and answers Skype, so you can wish him "Happy Father's Day."
#you hear a dog barking out of an apartment window and realize you just walked into a scene from Disney's animated 101 Dalmations.
#you go into a 7-11 and see it being used as a 7-11 in America would be: by big, burly men with late-night munchies, buying food from a bored-looking middle-aged man.
#you realize that writing daily blogs that are actually original and worthwhile is exhausting and impossible.
Sunday, April 29, 2012
Wormhole
Some things just disappear into mind-numbing nothingness. Today featured several of those things for several different reasons. Let's just catalog them, shall we?
1. My sleep schedule. Let's just throw this one out there: it's currently 2am. Why am I up? Because I woke up today just before noon. And why did I wake up just before noon? Because I went to bed last night just before 4am. And why did I go to bed just before 4am? Because I took a long nap Friday afternoon. And why did I take a long nap? Because I had to wake up early Friday morning, and I had gone to bed just before 1am. And why did I go to bed just before 1am? Because I had gotten up just before noon.
The end of my week, every week: it's just completely, totally screwed up. Also, it makes Mondays (and Friday), Hell.
2. My work ethic. What did I do today? Ummm.....
3. My decision-making ability. Today, my original planned productivity was to be centered around choosing and booking a hostel for Australia. However, as I've noted before, my ability to choose such a place utterly sucks. I have had it narrowed down to four for over a week now, have asked several people's opinion on the subject, and have still not found a way to pick. It's a wormhole of too much information.
Cue today. I did pick a hostel, sort of--like 85% sure now--but I haven't booked. Why? Well, because I realized that to book a hostel, I need to know what nights I'm staying there, and to know that, I need to know what nights I won't be, and to do that, I need to know when I'll be on a boat at the reef, and to do that, I need to know what company I'll be going through, and to do that, I'll have to pick one.
And, incidentally, the picking may require me to go through my hostel to get the best deal...
4. My evening. Like I said, it's past 2am. The last productive--or even semi productive--thing I did was at least three hours ago. What have I been doing in the meantime? Watching Youtube videos. Several of which did, in fact, involve wormholes as part of their conceits, and which did, themselves, form a wormhole into which my evening was sucked. Here are a few, to illustrate the wormhole effect for you:
No, for those who hear an accent and stop paying attention, those are not the same guy (or rather, the first three are the same and second two are the same), but they are friends, and both quite hilarious and relatively famous Youtube Vloggers. Also, if you haven't watched "Alex reads Twilight" (the last clip), do so immediately if you want to see the horrible deadening effect those books have on actual human readers. Also, it's funny.
So those were the items being sucked into my wormhole of a day. Hope you enjoy them as much as I did! Or, you know, hope you remember to wave to the time that slowly seeps out of you as you watch them... :)
1. My sleep schedule. Let's just throw this one out there: it's currently 2am. Why am I up? Because I woke up today just before noon. And why did I wake up just before noon? Because I went to bed last night just before 4am. And why did I go to bed just before 4am? Because I took a long nap Friday afternoon. And why did I take a long nap? Because I had to wake up early Friday morning, and I had gone to bed just before 1am. And why did I go to bed just before 1am? Because I had gotten up just before noon.
The end of my week, every week: it's just completely, totally screwed up. Also, it makes Mondays (and Friday), Hell.
2. My work ethic. What did I do today? Ummm.....
3. My decision-making ability. Today, my original planned productivity was to be centered around choosing and booking a hostel for Australia. However, as I've noted before, my ability to choose such a place utterly sucks. I have had it narrowed down to four for over a week now, have asked several people's opinion on the subject, and have still not found a way to pick. It's a wormhole of too much information.
Cue today. I did pick a hostel, sort of--like 85% sure now--but I haven't booked. Why? Well, because I realized that to book a hostel, I need to know what nights I'm staying there, and to know that, I need to know what nights I won't be, and to do that, I need to know when I'll be on a boat at the reef, and to do that, I need to know what company I'll be going through, and to do that, I'll have to pick one.
And, incidentally, the picking may require me to go through my hostel to get the best deal...
4. My evening. Like I said, it's past 2am. The last productive--or even semi productive--thing I did was at least three hours ago. What have I been doing in the meantime? Watching Youtube videos. Several of which did, in fact, involve wormholes as part of their conceits, and which did, themselves, form a wormhole into which my evening was sucked. Here are a few, to illustrate the wormhole effect for you:
No, for those who hear an accent and stop paying attention, those are not the same guy (or rather, the first three are the same and second two are the same), but they are friends, and both quite hilarious and relatively famous Youtube Vloggers. Also, if you haven't watched "Alex reads Twilight" (the last clip), do so immediately if you want to see the horrible deadening effect those books have on actual human readers. Also, it's funny.
So those were the items being sucked into my wormhole of a day. Hope you enjoy them as much as I did! Or, you know, hope you remember to wave to the time that slowly seeps out of you as you watch them... :)
Tuesday, April 24, 2012
Silpancho, take 2
In other news, I booked my hostel for my layover in Osaka this summer! (After, you know, FAR too many hours of agonizing for what will be, at most, a 10 hour stay.) Now, about the six nights in Australia when I'm currently homeless...but who knows how long THAT will take me.
Sunday, April 22, 2012
Cinderella
...but not really. "Cinderella" just happens to be the most imaginative way I could think of to describe how I spent my day today--essentially, with housework.
And well, that's not entirely true, either, unless you count sitting on my bed and editing as "housework," and even by that definition I doubt you'd consider the prolonged breaks I took to talk to friends and read articles online as "work."
(Also, as I did my housework without the help of magical mice and of my own volition, sans the orders of an evil stepmother, and as it's past midnight now and I haven't had any magical transformations or lost any shoes, let alone found a Prince Charming, I really can't claim the title.)
So...I should have called this post "Cinderella and lies," apparently.
But on the plus side, I did complete all but one of the items on my to-do list today! The final item is choosing the hostels for my trip this summer: one where I'll spend the bulk of my time, in Cairns, Australia, and one in Osaka, Japan, which I'm flying through at night on my way home. (Special considerations for the Japanese hostel: how can I squeeze as much out of Japan as possible in a single night, while still making my flight the next morning?) So, if anyone knows of a good place to stay in Cairns or Osaka...hit me up!
Side Notes with "Th":
(because they are not enough to write a lot about, but I feel like sharing)
Thunder. It has woken me up two mornings in a row, now, and this morning did so so loudly that I practically shot out of bed, my subconscious evidently under the impression that I would be murdered if I stayed where I was. Thunder itself isn't too odd, I guess, but what is is that, by the time I've gotten up for real, both yesterday and today, it was not only no longer stormy, it was not even raining, and, apart from the water on the roads, I would never have guessed the thunder was anything other than a particularly vivid part of my dream. We'll see if the pattern holds tomorrow; hopefully not, for my subconscious paranoia's sake...
Things I will miss about Taiwan. The following is an exchange I had with the sweet, motherly woman who works downstairs at the local 7-11:
Me: (give her the money for the eggs and bread I'm buying)
And well, that's not entirely true, either, unless you count sitting on my bed and editing as "housework," and even by that definition I doubt you'd consider the prolonged breaks I took to talk to friends and read articles online as "work."
(Also, as I did my housework without the help of magical mice and of my own volition, sans the orders of an evil stepmother, and as it's past midnight now and I haven't had any magical transformations or lost any shoes, let alone found a Prince Charming, I really can't claim the title.)
So...I should have called this post "Cinderella and lies," apparently.
But on the plus side, I did complete all but one of the items on my to-do list today! The final item is choosing the hostels for my trip this summer: one where I'll spend the bulk of my time, in Cairns, Australia, and one in Osaka, Japan, which I'm flying through at night on my way home. (Special considerations for the Japanese hostel: how can I squeeze as much out of Japan as possible in a single night, while still making my flight the next morning?) So, if anyone knows of a good place to stay in Cairns or Osaka...hit me up!
Side Notes with "Th":
(because they are not enough to write a lot about, but I feel like sharing)
Thunder. It has woken me up two mornings in a row, now, and this morning did so so loudly that I practically shot out of bed, my subconscious evidently under the impression that I would be murdered if I stayed where I was. Thunder itself isn't too odd, I guess, but what is is that, by the time I've gotten up for real, both yesterday and today, it was not only no longer stormy, it was not even raining, and, apart from the water on the roads, I would never have guessed the thunder was anything other than a particularly vivid part of my dream. We'll see if the pattern holds tomorrow; hopefully not, for my subconscious paranoia's sake...
Things I will miss about Taiwan. The following is an exchange I had with the sweet, motherly woman who works downstairs at the local 7-11:
Me: (give her the money for the eggs and bread I'm buying)
Her: 謝謝.
*I smile. A pause.*
Her: “很漂亮”
“so beautiful” 是不是?
Me: 對!
Her: (to me) So beautiful!
Me: Aww, 謝謝!
It absolutely made my night! (Even though I answered incorrectly...oh well, the point was served. :) )
Monday, April 16, 2012
6 Ways Living in a Foreign Country Changes Your POV
I'm noted on here before that I enjoy occasionally delving into the ridiculous, but funny, annals of Cracked.com. For those who don't share my hobby (if you visit, be warned: its humor can get dirty), one of the hallmarks of their website is their list-format articles. For instance, the two stories currently leading on their homepage are "The 7 Most Insane Ways People Legally Avoided Paying Taxes" and "5 Things Flight Safety Presentations Should Mention."
I like this format. And, just now, I feel inspired to try it out. So, apart from the literal change in view that comes from being on a different side of the globe, how does living in a foreign country change your POV? Well...
1. All your holidays become multi-day events
I've written about this, I believe, at every holiday I've experienced here in Taiwan. Thanksgiving, or Christmas, or Easter, rolls around. "Aw," I think, "Another holiday away from home! Time to have a search for a turkey meal/Christmas Eve service/Eggs Benedict-making fest to compensate." I have said festivities, miss my family, but do the best I can to have a good holiday. Then I go to sleep.
And the next morning, surprise! It's still Thanksgiving/Christmas/Easter! Yep, due to the wonder of time zones and the fact that my hometown is a solid 15 or 16 hours (depending on Daylight Savings Time) behind Taiwan, my family is usually having their big celebration right around the time I'm eating breakfast and driving to school the next day.
Let's take Easter for our first example, since it happened most recently and my family was disappointed because I (whoops!) forgot to Skype in with them for the holiday. But, as I figured out afterwards, there was a reason for that. See, my family celebrates Easter in the early afternoon, like, say 1pm-4pm or so. Which, in Taiwan, would be 4am-7am. And, on any given Monday, my alarm goes off at 8am. So...yeah.
On the more successful Skype holidays, say, Christmas, for example, I Skyped my family three times over the course of two days: noon on Christmas (Christmas Eve at home), late at night on Christmas (Christmas morning), and afternoon on Boxing Day (Christmas night). Or, take Thanksgiving, which found me Skyping in the next day at lunchtime, with my Subway turkey sandwich, as my family cleaned off their Thanksgiving late-night snacks. It's bizarre, but it's something you eventually adjust to: holidays are as fluid as time zones when it comes to when they're celebrated. And you'd better be there for all of them.
2. Everyone's online at the wrong time.
All this talk about time zones brings me to my second point: you know all those people who've hassled you your whole life about not staying up too late? You know, the early birds who consider staying up past 11pm or sleeping past 9am to be some sort of freakish abnormality, not to be tolerated under any circumstances? Well---they are now your most reliable contacts.
On the flip side, never have I felt more rewarded to keep an abnormal sleeping schedule than I have since I moved here. Want to talk to someone? Better be okay with staying up till 2am. Want a lot of people to read your blog? Well then forget about posting before midnight, it's best if you wait till at least 3am to maximize readership. (True numbers there: Google Analytics tells all.)
And, really, developing dual communities on opposite sides of the globe just means you have twice as much stuff to do online, and doing it in sync with the local community necessitates more and more hours spent there. At this point, just about every time I open my Facebook I have a notification or four waiting--after all, while I'm sleeping or teaching, my friends back home are in their late-night Facebook mode! And then, on top of that, once I'm in my late-night Facebook mode, so are my friends here in Taiwan.
So I'm not actually complaining about this shift. It really works out pretty well for a night owl/online addict like me. But still, time zone shifts can be confusing, especially when you're dealing with facts like...
3. You have to re-memorize all publication schedules
This may not be a big deal for other people. And, truthfully, it's not *that* big of a deal for me, most of the time, since I had no functioning television in my house last year and so relied exclusively on Internet versions of shows, which always come out later to begin with. But. You still get used to certain release dates; you still (if you're me) know *exactly* when Bones will be up, and *exactly* when The Office will be. You also have to get used to the fact that none of the reputable sites you know and love are licensed for use where you are.
And there are websites that get updated on a time schedule, too--usually something like Monday/Wednesday/Friday, yet now rendered Tuesday/Thursday/Saturday. Or, if it's a daily site, perhaps it will seem to be updated twice-daily, since it posts directly in the middle of your viewing session.
So it's a mixed bag of good and bad, and it makes Internet content completely unpredictable until you master its patterns (which I haven't), and unfortunate fact given that, living in another country, you are 100% dependent on the Internet for everything, from translations to communications to media to procrastination. Take your normal dependence, multiply it by 100, and you've got a rough idea.
Now take into consideration that you don't know when stuff will be available. Of course, 'not knowing' is a normal state of being while living abroad, which leads us to how...
4. You acquire a deep empathy with all immigrants, ever.
This is actually the number 1 reason why I truly believe that EVERYONE should be required to live somewhere they can't communicate at some point in their lives. Preferably while they're young, since it's easier then and it avoids years of misunderstandings.
See, if there's one thing I've realized since moving to Taiwan, it's that living in a foreign country is hard! You don't know your way around, you don't know the culture, you know next to no one, and, to top it off (in my case, at least), you can't even find the answers to these things because you don't know the language.
Let me give you an example. When I was in high school/the beginning of college, I worked for Jamba Juice. And I remember, some of our best customers were foreigners from Asian countries. They would come in, looking earnest, and spend what seemed like hours studying the menu before coming to the front and ordering, pretty invariably, an orange-carrot juice. Asking size was a struggle, and when they had finished ordering and paying--usually in cash, with a $20 bill, you could see the look of relief on their faces as they stepped back to wait for their juice.
I'm not going to lie, as employees, we hated this: orange juice and carrot juice come from two massive, hard-to-clean machines which would sometimes otherwise go a day without being used; beside that, these customers always seemed to come right after we'd finished cleaning both machines for the night. It was pretty annoying.
Well...I'm pretty sure I now am that person. I think of them every time I step foot inside a coffee shop, or a juice shop, or a restaurant of any kind, and stare unknowing at the massive menu of indistinguishable words which must, I know, be the dishes I'm supposed to be ordering. I'll stare, and stare, pick out the few words I recognize, and then, usually, place one of my stock orders--drinks: latte (hot or cold; hazelnut or almond), watermelon juice, or milk tea, and meals: beef noodles, hamburger (if it's a Western place) or, more frequently, "this one," with a point at the menu. I feel accomplished, and happy, if I can pull this trick off without a hitch. Anything beyond it is unthinkably hard.
I then pay--always in cash, and quite frequently in the local equivalent of a $20 bill (ie the one most ATMs use), a 1,000NT (~$30USD) note, because that's how my money comes to me. Hopefully I'm not inconveniencing the employees with a notoriously hard order, but truth be told, if I were I would have no way of knowing, and they would have no way of telling me.
In another side story, I remember foreigners U-picking at the orchards I also worked at in high school. They would frequently come back with fruit they weren't supposed to have picked, and I remember one of my co-workers in particular getting very frustrated over the fact. Sometimes it was an honest mistake, but sometimes--and you could tell the difference--they were just playing the "I don't understand" card.
Now, I know that card. I love that card. It really is true, too: not knowing the dominant language in the country you're living in (or not knowing it well enough) is a HUGE get-out-of-jail-free card. Not literally, of course, but the fact is you can get away with quite a lot when you really don't know the rules, or have any way of finding them out. Playing the foreigner card can come in quite handy and, previous frustrations about it aside, it's actually pretty wonderful.
See, all these little things bundle together to make you know, in pretty good anagram, exactly how immigrants feel in YOUR country. And, while it's easy to write people off who can't speak your language at home (You're in America! Learn the language!), it's much more difficult to do so when the situation's been reversed, and you see firsthand exactly how difficult it is, and, more importantly, how long it takes, to do so.
This also applies to ethnic enclaves, another phenomenon I never quite understood until I moved here, and realized that, while living abroad...
5. You develop a sudden, simultaneous love for and mistrust of all things 'foreign'--aka, from home.
I've written about this before: whenever I go to church here, or, really, whenever I see a foreigner here, a little alarm goes off in my head. What is going on? What is/are he/she/they doing here? Why are there so many foreigners in one place? Something is not right!!!
See, when you're living in a country where you stick out like a sore thumb, you go through a couple of phases. 1: WOW I am seriously the only white person in a 10-mile radius right now. 2: Well obviously I'm the only white person in a 10-mile radius right now, this is TAIWAN. 3: Yes, I'm the only white person in a 10-mile radius right now, move along, folks.
Right around when you hit that third stage, it becomes absolutely shocking whenever you're proven wrong. It happens occasionally that I'll draw some stares when I'm out on my scooter or on the MRT (I learned to ignore it sometime around stage 2 above), but when I see a white person in a similar context, I full-on stare. I can't seem to help myself. All memories of how much I dislike being stared at go out the window as I grapple with the unnerving realization that there's more than one of us here! It actually makes me quite uncomfortable, a fact which bodes interestingly for when I go back home in July...
And of course alongside this is the sudden idolization of all things American. We're going out to Western food? Fantastic! There's a Starbucks on that corner? Hooray! They serve red meat there? My day is made!
It's an odd juxtaposition, really, this love-hate relationship you develop with 'home,' and one which I suppose reinforces somewhat the idea that...
6. The whole world suddenly seems like it's just a whim (and a few saved paychecks) away
Obviously, moving across the world is a huge step, and one that involves a TON of planning, paying, and travel time. But, once you've done it, it becomes remarkably apparent just how feasible it is to do. Pick up and move to another country? Sure, why not!
As an outgrowth of that, then, travel becomes the most natural thing in the world. Want go to Thailand for a week? Sure, why not! How about Australia? Why yes I would, sign me up!
I've yet to determine whether these impulses come solely, or just primarily, from living abroad, or if they're more a product of having a full-time job (and salary) for the first time. But, for me, at least, I can't help but think it's probably largely because I'm living abroad. I mean, really, my wages are pretty low by US standards, and flight prices don't vary based on local cost of living (a bum deal, really), but even so it seems 100% natural and easy to travel widely while I'm here.
At the core of it is the realization that long plane rides really aren't that long, and that international travel, if you can keep a cool head about it, is pretty easy. And, especially once you've adjusted to living in a culture in an infantile state of non-knowing, it doesn't really matter where you display your ignorance; beyond that, you've developed the very specific skill-set necessary to navigate an unknown location using only hand signals and whatever level of English whoever you're talking to happens to know.
It's liberating, really: when you known nothing, and know you know nothing, you can go anywhere. Now that's a sentence I never would have written before moving here...oh, the joys of a fresh POV.
I like this format. And, just now, I feel inspired to try it out. So, apart from the literal change in view that comes from being on a different side of the globe, how does living in a foreign country change your POV? Well...
1. All your holidays become multi-day events
I've written about this, I believe, at every holiday I've experienced here in Taiwan. Thanksgiving, or Christmas, or Easter, rolls around. "Aw," I think, "Another holiday away from home! Time to have a search for a turkey meal/Christmas Eve service/Eggs Benedict-making fest to compensate." I have said festivities, miss my family, but do the best I can to have a good holiday. Then I go to sleep.
And the next morning, surprise! It's still Thanksgiving/Christmas/Easter! Yep, due to the wonder of time zones and the fact that my hometown is a solid 15 or 16 hours (depending on Daylight Savings Time) behind Taiwan, my family is usually having their big celebration right around the time I'm eating breakfast and driving to school the next day.
Let's take Easter for our first example, since it happened most recently and my family was disappointed because I (whoops!) forgot to Skype in with them for the holiday. But, as I figured out afterwards, there was a reason for that. See, my family celebrates Easter in the early afternoon, like, say 1pm-4pm or so. Which, in Taiwan, would be 4am-7am. And, on any given Monday, my alarm goes off at 8am. So...yeah.
On the more successful Skype holidays, say, Christmas, for example, I Skyped my family three times over the course of two days: noon on Christmas (Christmas Eve at home), late at night on Christmas (Christmas morning), and afternoon on Boxing Day (Christmas night). Or, take Thanksgiving, which found me Skyping in the next day at lunchtime, with my Subway turkey sandwich, as my family cleaned off their Thanksgiving late-night snacks. It's bizarre, but it's something you eventually adjust to: holidays are as fluid as time zones when it comes to when they're celebrated. And you'd better be there for all of them.
2. Everyone's online at the wrong time.
All this talk about time zones brings me to my second point: you know all those people who've hassled you your whole life about not staying up too late? You know, the early birds who consider staying up past 11pm or sleeping past 9am to be some sort of freakish abnormality, not to be tolerated under any circumstances? Well---they are now your most reliable contacts.
On the flip side, never have I felt more rewarded to keep an abnormal sleeping schedule than I have since I moved here. Want to talk to someone? Better be okay with staying up till 2am. Want a lot of people to read your blog? Well then forget about posting before midnight, it's best if you wait till at least 3am to maximize readership. (True numbers there: Google Analytics tells all.)
And, really, developing dual communities on opposite sides of the globe just means you have twice as much stuff to do online, and doing it in sync with the local community necessitates more and more hours spent there. At this point, just about every time I open my Facebook I have a notification or four waiting--after all, while I'm sleeping or teaching, my friends back home are in their late-night Facebook mode! And then, on top of that, once I'm in my late-night Facebook mode, so are my friends here in Taiwan.
So I'm not actually complaining about this shift. It really works out pretty well for a night owl/online addict like me. But still, time zone shifts can be confusing, especially when you're dealing with facts like...
3. You have to re-memorize all publication schedules
This may not be a big deal for other people. And, truthfully, it's not *that* big of a deal for me, most of the time, since I had no functioning television in my house last year and so relied exclusively on Internet versions of shows, which always come out later to begin with. But. You still get used to certain release dates; you still (if you're me) know *exactly* when Bones will be up, and *exactly* when The Office will be. You also have to get used to the fact that none of the reputable sites you know and love are licensed for use where you are.
And there are websites that get updated on a time schedule, too--usually something like Monday/Wednesday/Friday, yet now rendered Tuesday/Thursday/Saturday. Or, if it's a daily site, perhaps it will seem to be updated twice-daily, since it posts directly in the middle of your viewing session.
So it's a mixed bag of good and bad, and it makes Internet content completely unpredictable until you master its patterns (which I haven't), and unfortunate fact given that, living in another country, you are 100% dependent on the Internet for everything, from translations to communications to media to procrastination. Take your normal dependence, multiply it by 100, and you've got a rough idea.
Now take into consideration that you don't know when stuff will be available. Of course, 'not knowing' is a normal state of being while living abroad, which leads us to how...
4. You acquire a deep empathy with all immigrants, ever.
This is actually the number 1 reason why I truly believe that EVERYONE should be required to live somewhere they can't communicate at some point in their lives. Preferably while they're young, since it's easier then and it avoids years of misunderstandings.
See, if there's one thing I've realized since moving to Taiwan, it's that living in a foreign country is hard! You don't know your way around, you don't know the culture, you know next to no one, and, to top it off (in my case, at least), you can't even find the answers to these things because you don't know the language.
Let me give you an example. When I was in high school/the beginning of college, I worked for Jamba Juice. And I remember, some of our best customers were foreigners from Asian countries. They would come in, looking earnest, and spend what seemed like hours studying the menu before coming to the front and ordering, pretty invariably, an orange-carrot juice. Asking size was a struggle, and when they had finished ordering and paying--usually in cash, with a $20 bill, you could see the look of relief on their faces as they stepped back to wait for their juice.
I'm not going to lie, as employees, we hated this: orange juice and carrot juice come from two massive, hard-to-clean machines which would sometimes otherwise go a day without being used; beside that, these customers always seemed to come right after we'd finished cleaning both machines for the night. It was pretty annoying.
Well...I'm pretty sure I now am that person. I think of them every time I step foot inside a coffee shop, or a juice shop, or a restaurant of any kind, and stare unknowing at the massive menu of indistinguishable words which must, I know, be the dishes I'm supposed to be ordering. I'll stare, and stare, pick out the few words I recognize, and then, usually, place one of my stock orders--drinks: latte (hot or cold; hazelnut or almond), watermelon juice, or milk tea, and meals: beef noodles, hamburger (if it's a Western place) or, more frequently, "this one," with a point at the menu. I feel accomplished, and happy, if I can pull this trick off without a hitch. Anything beyond it is unthinkably hard.
I then pay--always in cash, and quite frequently in the local equivalent of a $20 bill (ie the one most ATMs use), a 1,000NT (~$30USD) note, because that's how my money comes to me. Hopefully I'm not inconveniencing the employees with a notoriously hard order, but truth be told, if I were I would have no way of knowing, and they would have no way of telling me.
In another side story, I remember foreigners U-picking at the orchards I also worked at in high school. They would frequently come back with fruit they weren't supposed to have picked, and I remember one of my co-workers in particular getting very frustrated over the fact. Sometimes it was an honest mistake, but sometimes--and you could tell the difference--they were just playing the "I don't understand" card.
Now, I know that card. I love that card. It really is true, too: not knowing the dominant language in the country you're living in (or not knowing it well enough) is a HUGE get-out-of-jail-free card. Not literally, of course, but the fact is you can get away with quite a lot when you really don't know the rules, or have any way of finding them out. Playing the foreigner card can come in quite handy and, previous frustrations about it aside, it's actually pretty wonderful.
See, all these little things bundle together to make you know, in pretty good anagram, exactly how immigrants feel in YOUR country. And, while it's easy to write people off who can't speak your language at home (You're in America! Learn the language!), it's much more difficult to do so when the situation's been reversed, and you see firsthand exactly how difficult it is, and, more importantly, how long it takes, to do so.
This also applies to ethnic enclaves, another phenomenon I never quite understood until I moved here, and realized that, while living abroad...
5. You develop a sudden, simultaneous love for and mistrust of all things 'foreign'--aka, from home.
I've written about this before: whenever I go to church here, or, really, whenever I see a foreigner here, a little alarm goes off in my head. What is going on? What is/are he/she/they doing here? Why are there so many foreigners in one place? Something is not right!!!
See, when you're living in a country where you stick out like a sore thumb, you go through a couple of phases. 1: WOW I am seriously the only white person in a 10-mile radius right now. 2: Well obviously I'm the only white person in a 10-mile radius right now, this is TAIWAN. 3: Yes, I'm the only white person in a 10-mile radius right now, move along, folks.
Right around when you hit that third stage, it becomes absolutely shocking whenever you're proven wrong. It happens occasionally that I'll draw some stares when I'm out on my scooter or on the MRT (I learned to ignore it sometime around stage 2 above), but when I see a white person in a similar context, I full-on stare. I can't seem to help myself. All memories of how much I dislike being stared at go out the window as I grapple with the unnerving realization that there's more than one of us here! It actually makes me quite uncomfortable, a fact which bodes interestingly for when I go back home in July...
And of course alongside this is the sudden idolization of all things American. We're going out to Western food? Fantastic! There's a Starbucks on that corner? Hooray! They serve red meat there? My day is made!
It's an odd juxtaposition, really, this love-hate relationship you develop with 'home,' and one which I suppose reinforces somewhat the idea that...
6. The whole world suddenly seems like it's just a whim (and a few saved paychecks) away
Obviously, moving across the world is a huge step, and one that involves a TON of planning, paying, and travel time. But, once you've done it, it becomes remarkably apparent just how feasible it is to do. Pick up and move to another country? Sure, why not!
As an outgrowth of that, then, travel becomes the most natural thing in the world. Want go to Thailand for a week? Sure, why not! How about Australia? Why yes I would, sign me up!
I've yet to determine whether these impulses come solely, or just primarily, from living abroad, or if they're more a product of having a full-time job (and salary) for the first time. But, for me, at least, I can't help but think it's probably largely because I'm living abroad. I mean, really, my wages are pretty low by US standards, and flight prices don't vary based on local cost of living (a bum deal, really), but even so it seems 100% natural and easy to travel widely while I'm here.
At the core of it is the realization that long plane rides really aren't that long, and that international travel, if you can keep a cool head about it, is pretty easy. And, especially once you've adjusted to living in a culture in an infantile state of non-knowing, it doesn't really matter where you display your ignorance; beyond that, you've developed the very specific skill-set necessary to navigate an unknown location using only hand signals and whatever level of English whoever you're talking to happens to know.
It's liberating, really: when you known nothing, and know you know nothing, you can go anywhere. Now that's a sentence I never would have written before moving here...oh, the joys of a fresh POV.
Tuesday, April 10, 2012
Well...
My plan for today's post was simple: upload all my photos and pull the (admittedly cheap) "I didn't have time to blog today, but here's a link to my newest album" trick.
But then I failed to upload my pictures.
What I did succeed in doing today was book plane tickets and obtain a visitors visa for my trip to Australia this summer! It's official, I will spend a week this summer in (or on my way to and from) Cairns, Australia, basking on the beaches, learning to SCUBA dive the Great Barrier Reef, and hopefully taking a day trip into the Outback. I've been putting off buying the tickets out of a mixture of fear and apprehension--afraid my money situation would change and apprehensive that ticket prices would go down later if I bought now (Murphy's Law and all that)--but it feels ever-so-nice to have that no longer weighing me down, but rather as a carrot leading me toward the end of June and a lovely little vacation. Now to book the hostel, etc...
The other thing the day taught me, though, is that I may be coming down with something. Which is why I'm writing this post now, at 11pm, and then shutting out the light and going to sleep for as long as my schedule will permit. Plans for tomorrow: a better post, perhaps?
But then I failed to upload my pictures.
What I did succeed in doing today was book plane tickets and obtain a visitors visa for my trip to Australia this summer! It's official, I will spend a week this summer in (or on my way to and from) Cairns, Australia, basking on the beaches, learning to SCUBA dive the Great Barrier Reef, and hopefully taking a day trip into the Outback. I've been putting off buying the tickets out of a mixture of fear and apprehension--afraid my money situation would change and apprehensive that ticket prices would go down later if I bought now (Murphy's Law and all that)--but it feels ever-so-nice to have that no longer weighing me down, but rather as a carrot leading me toward the end of June and a lovely little vacation. Now to book the hostel, etc...
The other thing the day taught me, though, is that I may be coming down with something. Which is why I'm writing this post now, at 11pm, and then shutting out the light and going to sleep for as long as my schedule will permit. Plans for tomorrow: a better post, perhaps?
Friday, January 6, 2012
Booking
It's odd, but one of the strangest, yet strangest for not being strange things that has happened to me here is that I now routinely research and book travel arrangements. That has never been a part of my life before this year--I was always either just traveling along with my parents, or else a broke college student with no realistic travel plans in the works--but now it is. And, as a result of my being in another country, it has become quite a regular part of my existence.
Today, I completed three separate bookings, for both flights and hotel rooms for myself and a friend. Whenever I got to Taipei, I either arrange things or (more often, honestly) work things out with Karina, and pay her back. The same goes for other travel around Taiwan; it usually involves myself and friends getting together and figuring out what we want and can afford to do, and then doing it. Whenever people come visit me--my mom in December and, looking forward, my friend Lindsey in March, and my brother Alex and sister-in-law Melanie in April, it's me who does the background research and preliminary booking for everyone involved. If I make it to Japan and Australia before heading back to the States, like I hope to, all the planning and paying will, obviously, fall to me.
It's obvious. And that's odd. After my entire lifetime of not being able to make these calls, I suddenly can, must, and do, without giving it a second thought. I am suddenly capable of planning entire weekends, throwing fistfuls of money (okay, not fistfuls, I'm actually not rich, after all) down for a plane ticket and somewhere to stay, with scarcely a flinch. It's self-determination to the utmost. And I love it. And also hate it.
I just spent a good two or three hours searching through hotels to stay at in Phi Phi for when Karina and I visit later this month. And I have to say, finding the right balance of price, niceness, availability, and non-scathing reviews is tough. Much respect for all of you who do it with even more variables, like "good for kids," or "allows pets" thrown in. It's the ultimate in uncertainty, and combing through pages and pages of information about rooms, or flights for that matter, is simply no fun. Booking sucks.
What doesn't suck, of course, is the fun that booking makes possible. Which is why it's become a regular part of my adult life thus far.
Today, I completed three separate bookings, for both flights and hotel rooms for myself and a friend. Whenever I got to Taipei, I either arrange things or (more often, honestly) work things out with Karina, and pay her back. The same goes for other travel around Taiwan; it usually involves myself and friends getting together and figuring out what we want and can afford to do, and then doing it. Whenever people come visit me--my mom in December and, looking forward, my friend Lindsey in March, and my brother Alex and sister-in-law Melanie in April, it's me who does the background research and preliminary booking for everyone involved. If I make it to Japan and Australia before heading back to the States, like I hope to, all the planning and paying will, obviously, fall to me.
It's obvious. And that's odd. After my entire lifetime of not being able to make these calls, I suddenly can, must, and do, without giving it a second thought. I am suddenly capable of planning entire weekends, throwing fistfuls of money (okay, not fistfuls, I'm actually not rich, after all) down for a plane ticket and somewhere to stay, with scarcely a flinch. It's self-determination to the utmost. And I love it. And also hate it.
I just spent a good two or three hours searching through hotels to stay at in Phi Phi for when Karina and I visit later this month. And I have to say, finding the right balance of price, niceness, availability, and non-scathing reviews is tough. Much respect for all of you who do it with even more variables, like "good for kids," or "allows pets" thrown in. It's the ultimate in uncertainty, and combing through pages and pages of information about rooms, or flights for that matter, is simply no fun. Booking sucks.
What doesn't suck, of course, is the fun that booking makes possible. Which is why it's become a regular part of my adult life thus far.
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