Always Get The Right Line Ready

Many years ago once I remember telling one of my college friends Yang that she and I had almost the same height. Yang felt hilarious but also slightly annoyed and said, 'Can't believe you say that! Don't you aware that your line of vision was going up when you're talking to me?!'

My explanation and theory to Yang then was maybe it's because most of time in my life I have to lift my chin with different angles when I talk to people. Since it is too often and I've got used to it, I stop feeling others are actually that much taller than I am.

I almost forgot about my crap theory until this afternoon Hannah, who I am sure is at least 5cm shorter than I am, said, 'After not seeing you for years, you are still petite and have the same height with me.'

Hannah and I were college schoolmates. Even though we usually found it interesting and relaxing talking to each other, we seldom hung out together then. After losing contact since our graduation, the connection was built again via facebook.

But not like those 'only-want-to-be-a-muted-voyeur' friends, Hannah sent me a message and asked me if I want to have a cup of coffee with her shortly after I clicked the 'accept' button.

Not hard to tell that Hannah brought me to a famous and popular afternoon tea shop. Layers of people were surrounding the small patio outside of the shop as if we were waiting to see a brilliant street performer playing ten oranges with his hands and spitting out flame at the same time. According to the waiting number we got, I estimated an hour of waiting was inevitable.

Queuing for at least an hour to get a cup of coffee and a piece of cake or some sandwiches while it was chilly and had some thin liquid threads falling from the sky?! Come on! It's crazy.

While I was planning how to make Hannah understand that patience is never my virtue and persuade her that the coffee and the cake next door would be as good as well, a waitress came out and said, 'Excuse me. If there are two guests who don't mind to sit at the counter, you may go inside right now. Anyone? Please raise your hand to let me know.'

I know I should ask Hannah first, but I just couldn't help to instantly stand on my tiptoe and put my right palm as high as possible above my head after the waitress closed her mouth. Maybe Hannah felt the threats from my eyes when I asked her. She smiled and said she doesn't mind before the waitress decided to let us in.

Honestly I don't understand why most of people preferred waiting for an hour than enjoying their time with their friends at the moment while also be able to monitor that their sandwich will be spread with enough butter and be put in decent amount of smoked chicken.

The afternoon was a bit like Hannah's press conference about her wonderful three-months trip in America. But I didn't feel annoyed at all. In fact, I often feel fascinated about people's self-help journey. I can understand that it's what may happen when you discovered and experienced the unexpected scenery or enlightenment from the expedition - you may have no time to swallow your spit and want to share the joy and excitement with others about what you've encountered.

I asked Hannah a question which I was asked frequently when people knew about my trip to the UK and Japan in 2007 - Did anything dangerous happen? Have you felt scared during your travel?

Hannah gave me the same answer that I offered to the people - 'No. I seldom felt afraid. Think it's because I prepared the information I need in advance. Or maybe I was just lucky.'

While I was just going to identify myself with her, Hannah continued and shared her friend's story with me.

Once on a very crowded tube in New york, Hannah's Taiwanese friend was sure that there was a palm sticking on her butt. She turned her head and stared at the man with a firm and serious voice, and said, "Do not touch me." But the guy wore a evil smile and answered with an obscene look, 'Why not?' Then it ended up with Hannah's friend getting off the tube at the next stop embarrassingly.

Hannah and I both felt lucky that none of this kind of thing happened to us. But think even if it does happen, I have my line ready. My advice for Hannah was - Never hesitate to start with the F word and make sure that everyone there knows that his name is wanker.

To Ignore Or Not To Ignore

I am not being too serious about it or taking it too far. I am just trying to value having such a clear and very straightforward chance to decide who can or can not walk into my life.

People may use Facebook for many different purposes. For me, it's all about sharing my PRIVATE life. Maybe I am self-obsessed. But just think it's equally rude for people to be a peeping Tom, make themselves at home in my life but NEVER even try to say hi after I accepted their 'friend' request.

I know there is privacy setting and there is also a button called "delete" in friends list. Trust me, I think some people may have found themselves getting lost on their way to my home now (if they try to.) But there are still some peeping Toms who swear never going to talk to me hiding in my friends list.

This evening I saw a new friend request on my Facebook. It's not at all a stranger. But since I can count with a single hand about how many sincere "Happy birthday!" I have received from the person during the past recent years, I can only assume that this 'friend' will not have the time and the energy to leave a comment when he sees the five-year-old me in my red bikini.

Problems must be solved from the root. Therefore, this time, about my pompous friends list, I decided to take action at the very beginning rather than grumbling and trimming it later.

Sorry! ("Ignore" button clicked.)

The Life-Changing Ten Months

The draft of this entry has been deleted and rewritten many times since I started this blog. Cos just thinking about the still vivid past and the disorientated future often make my fingers spend most their time being in a trance on the keyboard.

From junior high school to university, can't explain how my compass and my eyesight worked. The direction and the sign of my future were always clear to me - no professional or technical school, but high school, and then university and will definitely not choose English as my major.

None of my parents' opinions were involved at all. Not that I totally ignored their opinions. It's just I never really felt I would need them to tell me which way to go. It's like my everyday walk from home to school. On the way, attention and time could easily be distracted and wasted, but the crucial turn was just hard to be missed. It was as simple and nature as that. And the future even became more specific when I was at uni - to become a lawyer, just like most of my law school friends.

But after uni, the compass was somehow lost. And also, soon I suffered from one of the downsides of getting older - gradually deteriorating eyesight. Things became vague and it even got worse when I started my first and only full-time job I have had so far.

In 2005, I had my second job interview after only graduated from uni in a very short time. I remember I was trapped in a fancy library for about three hours to finish a paper test and for another 40 minutes for an interview. Finally, I left the impressive building with a free, cold and skinny chicken sandwich as lunch and an offer to work as a paralegal from next Monday.

It never occurred to the smug that it would turn out to be the longest and the darkest ten months of her life.

If people want to quickly get a picture of our life in the law firm. I will highly recommend the film, The Devil Wears Prada. For the people who haven't watched it, especially guys, I can assure you that it's not another chick flick. It's a documentary or a mental war film based on a true story!

Not sure it's the devil in my office acting on the silver screen, or simply just one of the many other devils in this world. One thing for sure about the common feature of the devils is a harsh tone and an icy look. And conventionally, even with the mahogany door firmly closed, it can still be loud and clear when the devil is yelling at someone in her office.

Moreover, under the devil's ruling, the clock ticked with a different sound. Time flies one hour a unit in the office to meet the format of the timesheet. Every entry of the timesheet must also accompany an equivalent work product. For example, 1079-01 0.2 Telephone conference with the officer of Patent Office about the patent application. It means I spent 12 minutes discussing a patent application for Client No. 1079-01. And the equivalent work product will be a short telephone conference report recording the conversation about it. This is how we charged our big company and celebrity clients with an hourly-rate bill. By how many chargeable hours we can provide from our own timesheet, it proves our value to the law firm.

There were times I worried about having an easy working day, since it would be difficult to fill the timesheet and come out with evidence to show how much I am worth.

In the law firm, 'freedom is slavery' is really being believed, since you will have your freedom once you become one of the senior partners. So, before achieving that, we have to endure being watched. By the devil. Through the timesheet.

Think people will still never get to imagine how tense our life could be, even when I share the private fact that Kevin, a junior lawyer, once shown me he got two coin-big areas on the back of his head that had no hair and I had already got my period missing for three months with no medical explanation then.

You may raise a question by now : why didn't you just quit if it's that stressful and painful? The answer is plain by looking at the past from now - cos I wasn't permitted. Not because of my supervisor, but myself.

In my generation, we are not only branded as "Generation Y" but also called "The Strawberry Generation" in Taiwan. The latter especially means an irresponsible generation that can't stand with pressure and will easily run away from challenges.

Turning in a resignation somehow meant to me was to admit my own failure and the rest of synonyms, to admit I was heavily knocked down with no teeth left in my mouth. Not to mention I would also be misunderstood and associated with the bad name that I always despise. Besides, it just wasn't that easy when you discovered and tried to face that the life was totally different from what you had pictured at uni. Hence, that's one of the reasons why I took an entrance exam to study for a master degree - to justify my resignation.

Luckily, I passed the exam and successfully got rid of the devil. But my dim future started to haunt me since then. To light the way to my future, I understand I need to be honest with myself and carefully listen to what I really want from my soul. But the process of it is like to consciously operate for myself.

It feels like I have to cut through every layer of my own skins, tissue and then bravely deep down to my bones to find out which cell or nerve goes wrong to blur my vision and also make me come up with so many questions : why can't I just like those 'normal' people who think some things will still be the same when you do it at the age of sixty after retire with my pension? And why can't I just accept that it will be a shortcut to things I want as long as I suffer for a relatively short time? Why am I being so serious about this? Why can't I be quiet not to ask so many questions? Why... Why.... And why.....?

While still being at the early stage of the operation, I think it is still too early to claim my breakup with law. The only two preliminary discoveries are : (1) Law firm will be the last choice of my future working place. (2) I am really not a pushover. I need MORE convincing answers than others about the questions above.

Another Guinness World Record?!

From Taipei Times - Taiwanese to kiss 100 men in Paris
English interview at the bottom of the page by Dan Bloom
The photos

Before Christina sent me the links above, I didn't notice it was on the news and had already had a storm-tide of viewers visiting her blog. Obviously Christina knew part of my appetite about news. The title did intrigued me and made me immediately gulped the links with my mouse. But after reading the article by Dan Bloom, I am...disappointed and worried.

The thing which disappoints and worries me is in the interview she said, as I quote, "now, a kiss seems like an amazing exchange of very interesting 'energy' for both the people kissing each other. That's what I've learned." If I were her ex-boyfriend, I would probably feel ashamed and then secretly try to find a cram school teaching about kissing or question if she had ever really loved me - is this something we need to spend two years living in Paris or to kiss 54 total strangers to know?!

Don't get me wrong. No matter what people think about her idea, I think the 27-year-old woman, Yang, is completely entitled to say it loud and proud that she did it for no reason but merely just a whim. And also about that's what she has learned. However, if it is going to be published as a book, her lack of purpose and a more creative enlightenment will greatly dilute my interest about the book and make me feel it is just like some of the Guinness World Records - it may mean a lot to the person who achieves a new record, but it brings and means almost nothing to me.

Before her coming book reveals her tips of how to break the ice when asking for a kiss from a stranger or shares with us that the exotic kisses will remove the shy and implicit character of we Chinese and make us be able to express the feelings more directly to the people we really love, I think I will tend to save the money to watch Daniel Craig being topless on the silver screen and walking in slow motion with his six packs and then passionately kiss the sexy Bond girl on the beach while the sun goes down.

The rainbow I miss

Last Saturday evening Gina and I took a casual cruise at Shida night-market before doing dinner together with Ivy. Usually the surroundings would be automatically switched to a muted mode when Gina and I hanged out together. Because our laughter, banter and oral reports of new developments of our recent life often became earplugs to block the rest of the sounds. But that evening, the voice from a radio programme from a small hair & beauty shop carried some powerful wind to blow away Gina's earplugs and thrust both of us into our own memory lane.

The radio programme might be called a Taiwanese version of Jeremy Vine's show on BBC Radio 2, which also talks about some hot topics of recent news . "Oh my God, I haven't listened to this programme since I came back. I think it's around 10 am in the UK right now" said Gina.

I have no idea how much an overseas phone call from the UK to my cell phone might cost, but according to the frequency Gina called me in 2007 during her last four months in the UK, I'll say it's pretty cheap. She was extremely suffering from homesick then. And the Taiwanese radio programme was her antibiotics to keep her temporarily healthy enough to count down her remaining days in the UK.

"Do you still remember the day we met at the coach station in Leeds? You know, your eyes couldn't look any smaller then," teasingly said Gina. "But seriously, even though we only spent three days together in the UK, you have no idea how glad I was to see you then." "I thought my eyes couldn't look any bigger! Since barely got any sleep on the plane and on the coach and met you at 5 am, it should be able to create double eyelids for me." I jokingly defended and repaid her a moved smile.

For the following three hours, my memory lane was clogged when having dinner with Ivy and Gina. But on my way home, it became smooth again. This time I walked into the scene of the opening night of demonstrating my pajamas to the UK. With a unique way to come on the stage, I was grinding my teeth in Gina's bed and sleeping with a letter "K" pose.

Due to my jet lag and lack of enough sleep, in the first formal evening in the UK I went to bed very early to review the beauty and hospitality of York that Gina and I discovered earlier that day. The mummy was well fixed in the "K" pose until Gina woke me up at about midnight. And I could tell from her serious face that it couldn't be about me invading her half of the bed or the noise my teeth had made.

"I only got two days left before going back to Taiwan and I found there were still soooooo many things to do before I leave. I even haven't collocated enough materials to bring back to Taiwan to complete my dissertation. Therefore, do you think tomorrow you can go to Manchester without me?" asked Gina. As a thoughtful, considerate and VERY sleepy friend, I told her "sure, of course" and then immediately and unconsciously back to my "K" pose.

The next day when I woke up in the early morning, I didn't know how to wake Gina up and told her I had been a somniloquist when I said yes to her last night. It would not be fine with me to go to Manchester by myself since I prepared nothing but relied on her to show me the city as we had discussed.

But, before I plowed a trench with my indecisive steps back and forth in Gina's room, I told myself that things couldn't be more frustrating and boring to wait until Gina wakes up or to find myself doing nothing in the end of my second day in the UK. Hence, "I am going to Manchester now. Let's have dinner together in the evening. E"- the note of me taking an adventure was stuck on Gina's laptop.

Follow the trail of my memory breadcrumbs of how Gina took me to York the day before and with some helps from a police officer, I got myself safely and smoothly to Manchester. That morning, outside of Manchester Piccadilly Station, the sky was painted with my mood - a widely spread of uneasy damp grey and a few gentle brushes of exciting white.

Not like my rest of well-planned days in the UK, Gina's sudden absence made me become duckweed and had no choice but drifted forward with the tide of the crowds. Don't know if it has anything to do with being a Law School student for many years. I was trained and used to put things into order or an organized plan. But at that time I even found the map from the Information Centre at the railway station was useless since three people I had asked all couldn't point out where I was and they included a guard from Primark. Time just couldn't crawl any slower then.

But strangely, the more I breathed in the slightly chilly air of the day, the more relaxed I became. And the air also brought my previous expectations about the whole journey back to me. Wasn't this just a part of what I had hoped for - to take a rest and have a cup of tea whenever and wherever I want and have time to watch how people walk, drink and laugh in this country!

I started to realize how rare the chance might be for me to quietly monopolize the view from a small cabin of the big wheel behind Manchester Arndale. And sometimes maybe being lonely is the beginning of being not lonely. Because as I was alone visiting Manchester Cathedral, a warm old British lady unexpectedly approached me and offered me a free guide about the cathedral. That afternoon I was taught a new point of view of getting lost and how to get along with a sense of feeling disoriented.

Even though I missed the announcement of the platform's changing and took the wrong train, back to Leeds I was still early enough to catch the dinner with Gina. Gina told me we were invited by her friends to have some simple dinner together at their flat.

The pizzas and the roasted chicken were well served with my story happened at the coach station at the airport. Gina's friends were amazed by my experience that the British old man sat next to me on the plane bought me a cookie and a cup of tea and left me with his business card for emergent help and also some coins to make phone calls to make sure I would be picked up in Leeds.

Chewing my pizza at the same time with their jealous exclamations of why they had never had this kind of luckiness during the past year in the UK, my focus and my mind were contentedly zooming out to the rainbow hanging outside of the window. I think the journey was destined to be beautiful and memorable.

Long time no see, beach!

For a few minutes my mind went completely blank when I took Ho and his friend's invitation to be a beach girl this Sunday afternoon. It was because the word "Beach" has disappeared in the dictionary in my mind for one or two years. I had tried, but still couldn't recall a vivid image the last time my feet were seasoned with a lot of finely ground black pepper after walking along the seaside.

The only beckoned memory was Ho was shining and popular when we studied at Law school. He played basketball for the basketball team of our Law school and also formed a band and became a leading singer of it. And apparently after not seeing him for quite a while, these days he has developed a new interest of going surfing during the weekend. And Ho's friend, Lin, was his high school classmate and used to be the drummer of Ho's band.

It was Lin's first time going surfing. I found it amusing when Ho told Lin how to carry a surfing board. Is a surfing board to man like a Hermès handbag to woman that there's a specific way to hold it to make you look posh?!

Today's waves were not suitable for surfing so we spent a lot of time sitting at the shallow part of the seashore and chatting under a foldable shed shared by a group of hospitable guys. Those guys were in their early thirties and were very friendly. They not only prevented us from getting sun burned, but also recharged our battery by providing snacks and beers.


Those guys were pretty creative since they made a crocodile (or a bad fish you might call) with sand. And just when I was going to compliment about their artistry, two of the guys started to discuss how about making a huge poo behind the tail of the crocodile - Ohhhhh, grow up, men!

Anyway, I stopped them from making the poo and had a very relaxing afternoon.

The academic dinner

After Jimmy announced he's going to tie the knot in the end of this year, the Saturday dinner was immediately turned into a symposium of "Two People, Or Two Family - The Difficulty When Planning A Wedding." And, of course, Jimmy was the main presenter and the rest of my schoolmates and I became inquisitive commentators.

The sweet news from Jimmy also proofed his heart has become seamless now. More than two years ago, Jimmy was deeply in love with a girl and they had been living with each other for almost two years. One day while everything seemed alright and he was at work, without any notice in advance, the girl called and told him that she had already packed her things and moved out. There was no the other man between them and no clear explanation about the sudden breakup. For the following months, Jimmy was looking like a living zombie.

But, after such a sudden and deep stab into one's heart, now look at Jimmy and the girl he's holding hand with! Obviously the zombie has already reincarnated and lives in the seventh heaven.

Although Jimmy just started to plan the wedding for about four months, it's long enough to make him talk like a prestigious eighty-year-old professor. From the traditional customs of the whole wedding to the reception, there were so many times Jimmy said it's not something I can decide when I told him what I want or what I think about it. I didn't say something like I want to wear a puffy dress and get married in Disneyland. But the reply from Jimmy sometimes made me feel daunting in a certain degree.

I won't call myself a feminist since think men and women can never be equal in so many ways. To me, the key point is always about respect. But feel there are some traditional customs of a wedding that contradict my belief and emotion.

For example,
1. On the wedding day, the mum of the bride has to splash a basin of water to the road after the groom comes to pick up the bride from her place and the daughter officially leaves the house. It symbolizes the daughter is like the splashed water - she belongs to another family from the moment.

I love my family. I just don't like the hidden idea that once you get married, you'll have to cut the connection with your family even it only has a symbolic meaning. Besides, I am confident that my love is big enough for my future and current family members to share.

2. After getting in a limo, the bride has to throw away a hand-held fan from the window which represents she will abandon all her bad temper to start a new family.

I fully agree it should be encouraged if we try to make ourself become a better person. But can my future husband be that perfect that I am the only person who has bad temper to throw away? If I need to throw away a hand-held fan, can I ask him to do the same thing with me?

Jenny said she has never thought about the meanings of all these customs. Jimmy said they are just some customs and I shouldn't take them too far. Besides, as an expert of a wedding planner, he emphasised again that sometimes they are not something I can decide - the parents of the groom might feel offended if I don't do so.

I still admire the culture within a wedding. But just can't stop thinking at the same time if some customs are really that unbreakable or can't be omitted, especially when people don't even think about the meaning of the customs.

Maybe they are really something I can not decide. But Jimmy, at least I can decide how much money I am going to put in the red envelope to give it to you.

Asking A Woman's Phone Number For Dummies : Taiwan Edition

No matter how instant and convenient a man can meet a woman through the internet, the old fashion way to meet a woman in the street is never really forgotten.

But, without a virtual flower, heart or any other emoticons to send, in real world some men's ability to ask a woman's phone number in the street when he wants to know her seems to backtrack to a single-celled organism. Tonight I feel obligated and commissioned to bring those men back to Darwinism. So, guys, here are my advice. Listen up!

1. NO! NO! NO! Never ever just pop up a line like this, "errr...can you give me your phone number?" Are you a policeman or what?! Be patient and polite!

2. Yes, you want her to stop, but suddenly park your motorcycle and block her way, believe me, it's not a glamorous way to come on the stage, especially when she is wearing her earphone listening to her music and walking with very impatient pigeon's steps on her way home.

3. Wearing a suit will add about 50 points for you, but, remember, the total points will be 1000. Besides, I know you might still be on your motorcycle, but still wearing your helmet when you are talking to the woman is like talking while still having your food in your mouth - good friends won't mind at all, but to a potential friend, 500 points will be lost even before you speak!

4. Don't chicken out at the crucial moment when the woman stops and looks at you. Be a man!

5. Will you make friend with a person you don't even know his/her name? Mind you, you are no more than a total stranger who makes her stop alone in the middle of a dusky lane. Unless you want to hear "fuck off" - introduce yourself first!

6. Not only be a man, but also be a gentleman - don't forget to say "thank you" even when she turns you down determinately.

Although I hope my advice will be helpful, I'm not confident about it at all. I doubt I'll give my phone number to a stranger even he takes all the advice. Maybe I need a book called "Giving Phone Number To A Man For Dummies."

A could-not-be-more-true nightmare

Taiwan mudslide survivors found
Taiwan rescue effort continues
People crying to President Ma for help
People crying for witnessing their own house being washed away

This is absolutely the last way I want my country to be noticed to the world. And sadly these videos only present small ripples of the lives that people in the south of Taiwan have at the moment.

Compare to the northern capital city, Taipei, the southern part of this small island is really like another country. Besides the consecutive heavy rain in the afternoon during these two days, there's nothing really changed or damaged in Taipei. In fact, the only difference I can directly feel is just fewer choices of vegetables that I can have in a restaurant.

Being a capital city, the safeness is not surprising at all. But after watching the news these days, it will be hard not to wonder and worry if the capital city has become the only city the government cares about.

During my dinner break at cram school this evening, I shared my table at a cheap buffet restaurant with a middle-age woman sitting opposite me. While watching the news as our side dish, I could see clearly that those despairing and helpless faces on TV painted the corners of the woman's eyes red and made her eyes moist.

Although the vivid images on TV these days were plenty enough to swallow me up easily, my mind still went completely blank when I tried to imagine any of my family member is missing or the most valuable property, our apartment, which is almost everything mum and dad have earned for all their lives becomes mounds of mud.

Hope President Ma's government will run as fast as his last name suggests and also hope they can learn a lesson from it that when Taipei is safe and fine, it doesn't mean the whole island is safe and fine!

From Point A to Point C

The remaining effect of leaving a comment on my friend Gary's blog about quitting a job makes my bleached past and uncertain future hovering in my head during these few days.

After my graduation from university, I have only had one full-time job experience which lasted for about eight months in a law firm. How was it? Well, to make it short, what I can tell you is all units in the world for measuring will never be big or heavy enough to describe the pressure I had.

The image is still vivid when the junior lawyer Kevin who had been working in the law firm for ten months showed me the three fingernail-size areas on the back of his head that had no hair. While Kevin paid the price to keep his decent office with losing some hair, I defended my pride and expectations about my first real job with the price of having my period late for more than three months without any explanations after some medical checks. It is definitely the longest eight months in my life.

Even though this segment of my memory is too bitter to swallow and will be buried deeply at the darkest corner in my head, I seldom feel regretful about accepting the job. Because it made me rethink about what a job really means to me and what kind of life I might really want. If to explain it with my philosophy, the eight months were an inevitable and necessary "Point B" that I needed to pass through in my life journey, or I can't become who I am now.

My best friend Gina, who went to the same law school with me has depressingly yelled at her parents to stop expecting her to become a lawyer when we graduated from university. She firmly claimed she really had no interest in it. But after receiving a master degree in Marketing from Leeds University and came back to Taiwan in 2007, she recaptured her passion for becoming a lawyer and decided to go to a cram school to prepare for it. Many people consider it was totally a waste of time and money for Gina doing a master degree in Marketing in the UK. But somehow I can understand it. It's just Gina's "Point B."

After walking on some unexpected and winding roads of my life journey during the past few years, sometimes I really believe before reaching the goal of our life or finding what we really want to find, we need to go somewhere or do something else first, even we don't plan to. And now think the next thing I need to learn is to appreciate the scenery during the journey from Point B to Point C.

A Yellow, Yellow Sun

O, my friendship has been like a yellow, yellow sun,
But is eclipsed by your elusive appearance.
O, my friendship has been like a sweet, sweet bun,
But is consumed by your successive indifference.

As selfish are you, my utilitarian friend,
So deep in disappointment am I,
That I will not give you a red envolope, my friend,
Till all the seas go dry.

Till all the seas go dry, my friend,
And the rocks melt with the sun!
And I won't give it to you still, my friend,
While the sands of life shall run.

And fare you well, my SINCERE FRIEND,
And fare you well forever!
And we'll never talk again, my FRIEND,
Unless the imbalanced friendship is over!

I've endured the fact that my cell number only appears in your contact list when you need my help. But after not hearing from you at all for more than two years, today the way you started your greeting really irritated me - "Hey, my mum said everyone in their life should have a lawyer friend or at least a friend graduated from Law school. So, today when I got my legal problem, I think about you right away. And oh! By the way, I may need your address soon since I am going to get married next year. You know who I am, right?!..."

You may just try to be funny and you may say I have no sense of humour, but I didn't feel amused at all!

After trying hard to hide my disappointment and measuring the frequency of your sincere phone calls during the past five years in my head, I could only offer you very limited information about your legal problem.

I know you may not read this. But just don't bother if you are trying to send me your wedding invitation and ask for a red envelope. Cos there will be no money in my envelope but my blessing and what I just wrote above!

Overestimated legs

Went hiking on Saturday morning as my first practice for going climbing Yushan (玉山) next month. I didn't plan to do any special training until recently some friends and relatives tried to convince me that jogging or cycling only do little help to hiking or mountain climbing. And even with going jogging or cycling at least three times a week, I'll still need to experience and get used to the different pain that hiking will bring to me.

With the eager to proof the "threats" from my friends and relatives were not applicable on me, there was not even a pore for a tiny sleepy fairy to stand on my eyelids when I heard my alarm. I met my uncle and aunt precisely at 6am at the bus stop.

Despite sitting at the last row on the bus with my uncle, a glance at the faces of other passengers was unnecessary. I could tell undoubtedly I was the youngest person by merely looking at those almost bald and gray heads.

45 minutes later, Yangminshan (陽明山) was getting bigger and bigger. I expected her to be familiar and hospitable as usual since my friends and I had spent countless evenings and nights enjoying the night view with beers or coffee and sharing tears or laughter in our recent life with her. But she didn't look exactly the same and I also found during the daytime she wore not only a different colour of her outfit but with a fresher face.

When you go hiking at Qixing Mountain(七星山), you will get enough chances to practice saying "Good morning!" in Chinese to or back to people you don't know and may never see again in your life. But almost every one did the practice, even the two westerners we met.

My aunt, uncle and I were only trying to chat with each other in the very beginning of our hiking. Cos we knew it was very rude to interrupt the fervent conversation between birds, cicadas and other insects. Besides, think even without our own manners, my heart beat would still violently remind me.

A billionaire must drop and scatter some teeny diamonds on his way hiking. With the diamond-like water drops, the leaves and grass at both sides of the trail were shining. The dust carried on our shoulders were blew away by the natural A/C while the dark green window shutters blocked the stalk of the sunshine for us.

I don't know it's my seventy-year-old uncle or me trying to show "I am still young enough", my aunt said she couldn't keep up and wanted to give up going to the top with us. (Ok ok, I admit after feeling the gentle ache of my knees, it flashed through my mind for a few seconds that I wanted to stay with my aunt.)

It took us slightly more than an hour to stand at the highest spot in Taipei area, 1120m high to be exact. Due to the coming typhoon, the strong wind made me walk like a drunk person. And with its violence of rolling my eardrums, I had an illusion of riding a roller coaster.

Although I brought my camera with me, think it's the muscular pains of my lower legs mainly took the job of recording the whole trip for me. Now great, my friends and relatives do successfully make me start to worry if I can finish climbing Yushan in less than two weeks.

Practice will make perfect (hopefully)

Bought a cooking book a few days ago, which is about recipes of making a dough for Chinese cooking. After rehearsing with some flour and water for several times in my mind, today I finally got a whole and quiet evening to hear the word - "Action!"

The scene for this evening was about me in my black cotton shorts and white vest reading the cooking book in a small kitchen for five minutes in the beginning. Then after some mixing, kneading and dry frying, I should show to the invisible camera about my speckled-brown 蛋餅. (蛋餅 is something similar to tortilla. It can be used and presented in many different styles.)

I followed the recipe successfully until I needed to cut the big dough into equal pieces and rolled them out to very thin pancakes. It was easy to make them oval, square, or other unidentified shapes but somehow they refused to look like a full moon. The best one I got looked like a three-year-old kid's butt.

I know it requires a lot of techniques to make a nice dough, but it just never came to my mind that to roll it circular does, too. It looks easy!

However, the feeling wasn't completely strange to me. I remember the first time I tried to learn how to serve in tennis. My excitement quickly turned into puzzlement when my coach told me to put my racquet down. I tried hard to hide my puzzlement and not to ask him, "I have never watched Roger Federer serving without a racquet. Why should I put my racquet down?"

After showing me the serving pose, my coach wanted me to throw the ball high and then caught it with the same position and at exactly the same place. I was thinking, "Oh, come on. I've watched plenty of tennis players doing it on TV. And it is just throwing a ball. How hard can it be?" But for the next 20 minutes, I felt I was dancing Cha Cha with the ball. I just couldn't stop moving back and forth to catch it.

Even with a perfect circular shape, think the cooking was still doomed since I used a different kind of flour. Although the texture was different and the shape wasn't quite right, it didn't bother me at all. Isn't it what cooking about? Fun and full of experiments.

Before it stops looking like a butt, my dear family and friends, please be patient!

Generation undecided, still

Cinema is one of the pretty good shelters I would highly recommend if you feel you are going to melt or vapor soon from this small island during this season. Today I went to Shin Kong Cineplex in XiMen and watched another film from Taipei Film Festival 2009.

The film is called Generation Undecided, directed by Elmar Szücs, who suddenly found out that apart from having a new born baby, he was in the middle of nowhere with his coming 30th birthday. I was immediately intrigued when I read the introduction of the film from the program booklet - Isn't it also about my story in a certain way?

Guess many people were as interested in generation classifications as I was. The seats were almost occupied with different sizes of butts. Without any unreasonable and fancy scenes of digital effects or a sexy actress in her lace tank running with her breasts counting beats, (Go watch Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. You will understand what I'm talking about.) the film was rough and plain in a very friendly way and I enjoyed my visual travel in Germany very much.

But don't know if it's because I didn't pay enough attention to the film, I left the cinema without any enlightenment and still carried the same question with me on my way to the cram school.

Special moments in our life

Got an email lying in my inbox this morning with a subject - "Want to share this special moment with you." "The special moment" had nothing to do with any romantic atmosphere, but a special (well, at least, to my friend it is) combination of numbers.

The email said, at 12hr 34 minutes and 56 seconds on the 7th of August this year, the time and date will never happen in your life again! (123456789)

Although obviously I would not only share the special moment with my friend but also with at least 30 unrecognizable recipients, I still appreciate his time clicking my email address from his contact list.

I am just wondering : How special was the moment? Doesn't it also make "at 10hr 10 minutes and 10 seconds on the 10th of October of 2010", "at 11hr 11 minutes and 11 seconds on the 11th of November of 2011" and so on special, too?

Maybe there is an implicit message in my friend's email that some special moments indeed will never happen again in our life, but some special moments are still there, waiting.

Priceless egg fried rice

It was almost five o'clock when mum and dad got home this evening. Usually if the kitchen still remains dark after five, it means my sisters and I should probably start to decide later in the evening - turn left or right? Shida night market or Yong Kang street?

As the cheap but delicious Thai restaurant on Yong Kang street and the Japanese style roast chicken in Shida night market were still trying to fight for the championship in my head, dad knocked my door and asked me if I want some egg fried rice for dinner.

"errr...ok", I answered with many question marks on my face.

Don't get me wrong. I have no bias against egg fried rice. I was just googling in my head if I had tried any delicious egg fried rice in Shida or on Yong Kong street.

I tried to find out which food stall or restaurant we were talking about. But, "No, I am gonna cook it for you all myself." That's the answer I heard from dad.

From kindergarten to high school, no matter how early I needed to get up, I often had my breakfast at home which was made or at least prepared by mum. Even for Taiwanese women, it's still not that common to make breakfast for your children in the morning. I have many classmates that their mums were still sleeping when they went out to school.

I remember when I was about 10, for a child who seldom had any chance to eat outside I used to envy some classmates who could have their lunch box ordered from the school. But after trying it, I immediately realized I was just charmed by the colourful pictures outside of the lunch box.

With a really good cook in my family, sometimes it's hard to show how much cooking talent I have, let alone dad. The only memory of dad cooking for me that I can still scoop out now is about twelve or thirteen years ago when mum went travelling to Canada for around two weeks.

Even though curry and chicken noodle soup took their turn to be my sister Ruby's and my dinner for quite a few days during that period, we never complained about anything. Because after seeing dad trying to toss the pan like a chef to give us a tasty fried egg for breakfast, but ended up with the egg clinging passionately on the wall, it's hilarious enough to convert our attention of the constant attack of the curry and the noodle soup.

As a thoughtful daughter, I asked dad if he needed any help when he was heading to the kitchen. He said, "Oh, come on. It's just egg fried rice! It's easy." Well, he might be right since eggs and rice were really the only ingredients he used.

Not like the good egg fried rice we have tried, dad's rice didn't separate from each other completely enough and without any supporting characters, the only two leading characters were clearly recognizable.

But, believe it or not, the bland food was very delicious.

Chinese idioms with animals

After learning some idioms from my dog-tired friend Gary this morning, it kind of reminds me when I was a little girl, a comic book about idioms related with animals used to be my bedtime reading for quite a while.

We have a lot of idioms about animals/insects in Chinese, from a tiny ant to a big elephant, from animals with no legs to animals who need plenty of shoe racks. Below are some I find interesting. (And literally translated by me.)

A cat crying for a rat (貓哭耗子)
showing insincere sympathy

A three-legs cat (三腳貓)
doing something clumsily, especially because of not having enough knowledge or skill

Playing piano to an ox (對牛彈琴)
talking about something to someone who can't understand it at all or is not interested in it at all

Looking for a horse while riding a donkey (騎驢找馬)
looking for something you have already had, or keeping staying with something you're not that satisfied with while looking for something better to replace at the same time

Add legs after drawing a snake (畫蛇添足)
doing something unnecessary

Roars from an east riverbank lion (河東獅吼)
shoutings from a very angry wife to her husband

After watching the great match played by Andy Roddick and Andy Murray and being struggling in which Andy I am going to root for during the whole match, I am dog-tired, too. Bed time.

Sometimes maybe it should be as simple as that

Cathy was a colleague from my part-time job at school. I don't know if it's because her funny and silly problem of keeping walking straight on a pavement amuses me very much or it's because she also has the height of a hobbit as I do. I usually forget she is actually three years older than I am. The two hobbits became good friends.

During the past year, Cathy had always been a supporter of having black and straight hair as her DNA suggests. She usually ties her hair into a ponytail which suitably meets her simple and quiet dressing style. But about two weeks before she quit her job, she walked into the office with a romantically curled hairstyle which also carried a comfortable red-brown shimmer.

Cathy explained that since she is going to move to Japan soon and gets married in July, her mum thinks the new hairstyle might become a fashion shield which can keep her safe from any possible attack from those stylish Tokyo girls.

For Cathy's own safety and beauty, she changed her hairstyle, but the rest of her still remains. She's still the girl who thinks it's unnecessary to spend any money wearing her wedding dress and take photos before the wedding ceremony. In fact, if it were not for the wishes from her fiance's family, she even wouldn't want a dinner reception.

The spark between Cathy and her Japanese fiance was lighted in the first year while they both studied for their master degree in America. From then on, together for the following two years they took some courses which are not only about English teaching but also about dating.

After leaving America and respectively going back to Japan and Taiwan with a diploma, they advanced their learning about dating by taking another two-year, long-distance and cross-culture course.

Even though they saw each other every six months in Japan or in Taiwan and texted each other once or twice a day, they seldom chatted on MSN and only talked once every two weeks on Skype for usually less than 40 minutes during the past two years.

I thought I have already been well aware how few I can recognize the faces of love. But after knowing Cathy's story, I found out that when it comes to love, I was more ignorant and uneducated than I thought - Do you know in a long-distance relationship the temperature from a lover's hand can last for six months without any frequent help from Skype or MSN to maintain the heat?

Cathy usually walked with me to buy my coach ticket back to Taipei. Once while we walked along the calm and beautiful lake in our school campus, she told me she felt uncertain about quitting her job to start a new life in Japan. I asked her if it's because she is still not so sure he's the right man to marry and feels the two of them should spend more time living together before they get married.

She slightly bit her lips and gently shook her head while two baby pink clouds floated through her cheeks. "Never. We have never doubted about it.", Cathy answered bashfully.

I believe sometimes it's very important and necessary to show how much our love is and how hard we can try for the one we love. Even though I seldom question about how brave and defiant I can be for love, Cathy's story reminds me maybe it's equally important to learn that sometimes it is not the harder the better and it might be perfectly enough to try with the efforts it just needs.

Me and the prince

I can't remember the exact age during my adolescence when the first time I read Le Petite Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry in Chinese. But I remember the puzzled feelings after reading it that it seemed not that brilliant as people said. At that time I blamed myself for being too young and too foolish to realize its profundity. I deeply believed there must be some misunderstanding between me and the little prince.

About a month ago, accidentally I bumped into Le Petite Prince in an English version in a second-hand bookshop. It was quite unusual for me, whose eyes are sometimes too BIG to find things in front to notice this aged, slim and wrinkled book standing at a very unnoticed corner of the bookcase. I immediately took it as a sign that the prince wanted a chance to appeal. He wanted to claim his innocence to me and regain his reputation.

Sorry to let the author down that I didn't do what he mentioned in the end of the book to inform him about my encounter with the prince. Instead, I took him home with me secretly and silently.

Honestly, after reading the book again, I feel it turned out to be proving my innocence more like. I still feel almost the same way as the first time I read it.

Even though I do envy the moments when the little prince is being romantic to his rose and I would also like to go to any pawn shop to exchange for any childlike imagination like the prince's, I think I have a problem appreciating the beauty of the could-not-be-more-obvious ideas in this parable.

It's like some mums who try to hide some very finely chopped carrots in a hamburger and persuade their kids to eat it. Carrots are still carrots which still can be seen clearly.

Besides the-finely-chopped-carrots-like metaphors to me, I also have a different feeling about some ideas the author mentioned in the book. For example, in chapter six the little prince says, "You know - one loves the sunset, when one is so sad.."

There is one very famous line from a poem by Li Shang-Yin in Tang Dynasty says, "Sunset is extremely beautiful, but night is drawing nigh." It's the same in Chines culture that sunset is usually related to some reminiscent and sadness atmosphere.

To some people, to be embraced by a nostalgic color tone of twilight might be a trigger to immerse themselves in their bitter sweet memory. But instead of keeping drowning myself in the tide of my irrecoverable beautiful past, I would rather wear a shallow smile, admire the feminine and not-so-aggressive beauty of sunset and tell myself I am just waiting for a more beautiful future to come.

Perhaps I have already become a serious adult with no imagination, just like what the prince says. Maybe the prince will want another appeal. But guess he will have to wait for quite a long time to see me again in my supreme court.