Friday 3/21-Sunday 3/23/03            A Hospital Visit, a Haunted Hotel

 

            Gin had invited us to her dad’s friend’s vacation house down south in Ping Dong for the weekend; she and Jon and Lev were going and I’d planned to, but after the stinky tofu attack I wasn’t up for it, my stomach was still shifty, plus just got a phone call that Agong was back in the hospital, figured I should visit him as well as Ama who I skipped visiting last weekend.  PLUS, when it’s 6PM and everyone’s gone, Dr. C drops in (thankfully just as I’m doing some project-related analysis) with some papers—I thought it was the 4 pages I gave him last week to look over and was afraid he was going to say, “Here take this back and give it to me when you have some real writing done,” but instead it was a long-ass grant proposal he’d been slaving over--my paper is shelved to the depths of somewhere not very important, thank goodness--and he wanted me to edit the English, by Monday.  PLUS, I finally got my W-2 faxed over from Dad, so my weekend is lookin’ rather uh, indoorsy.

 

            Friday:  tried the Mad Lib thing with Livian.  Maybe because she had a better story to work with (“The Fantastic Mr. Fox”), and because she substituted the characters’ names with her classmates’ (one of whom I think she has a crush on because she talks about him all the time), but it actually turned out pretty funny and I even had trouble reading it without laughing.  For example:

 

Boggis ran toward the long, thin Bean.  He never bathed.  As a result, his ears were always clogged with wax and bugs and dirt.  This made him deaf.  “What shall we do?” cried Mrs. Fox.  “Drat and blast!  You can’t trick me,” yelled Boggis.

 

Became:

Kevin swam toward the short, tall Cherie.   He never walked.  As a result, his feet were always clogged with pianos and violins and flutes.  This made him fat.  “Eggs!” cried Mrs. Penguin.  “Woo Wah!  You can’t eat me,”  yelled Kevin.

 

She squealed with laughter and asked me to do another and another.  So there, Stephanie!  Someone likes my Mad Libs.

 

           Saturday went to see Agong in Heping hospital, a walk from XiMenDing which is actually dead at 10AM, the only time it is maybe.  Heping looks kinda nice from the outside but soon as you walk in you’re hit w/the musty sick old people smell and you can tell right away it ain’t no NTU hospital—it’s much older, not nearly as nice.  People everywhere were wearing mouth covers; lately more (but still not the majority) do wear them because of the SARS scare.

 

There were two buildings and I couldn’t find Agong even after calling ZuenHong, he’d said he was in room 80241 but all the signs said 802, 803 etc. Finally asked a nurse, she asked what his name was and all I knew was “[Grandpa Lin]”; she smirked but I explained I’m a HuaChiao kid so I never knew him all these years, and at least I knew “[it’s the Forest word Lin]” so they looked it up and asked, “Lin Huen Shan?”  I said “[I think so]”, really meaning “Sure, any name sounds right.”   He was in the room right behind me.  It turned out he was in “802 Zhi 1” meaning “802 suite 1” (or bed 1).  The Zhi sounds a bit like “4”.

 

            A-hsiang was sitting on the chair next to him and smiled at me.  I patted him and asked if he knew me but he said didn’t.  After a few minutes he said my name and I said, “[That’s right!  It’s Grace]” but then he said, “[Do you remember Grace?]”  He seemed quite alert though and would turn his head to look when the man in the next bed coughed and made icky noises, or when someone would walk by.  A-hsiang seemed more at ease and relaxed without Ama there to hound her.  Ama was kinda right that she has no “Li mau”, respect/consideration.  Ama said Ayi’d bought some meat for Agong and A-hsiang kept taking some for herself when they were eating at the table.  Well I was standing here for the longest time and A-hsiang just sat in the (only) chair, chilling out.  I finally sat on the arm of the chair and still she didn’t say anything.  I don’t think she knows my dad pays for her freaking wages. 

 

Anyway, her Chinese seemed much better and she was wearing bright new clothes, I wonder from where.  Agong told her quite often that he needed to “niau niau” at which she’d quickly pull his pants down, diaper aside and hold his urinal, all without drawing the curtain.  If it were me, would I ask to have the curtain drawn for that or would I be at the point where I wouldn’t care, it was too much energy to ask and silly for an old frail person to be so concerned with privacy?  When I visit Agong I think a lot.  There’s not much else to do when you can’t converse with your Taiwanese vocab of 20 words.  I wonder about A-hsiang, she has kids, where are they?  Still in Vietnam?  How does she live without seeing them?  How much must she hate her job, being yelled at by Ama, doing “niau niau” for Agong, then staring at the walls, no one to talk to?  But she laughs all the time, at everything, usually inappropriate times.  I thought it a little freaky and evil-sounding at first, and wondered if she was crazy or just stupid, but maybe it’s her way of coping, the only way she can.

 

            Agong slept a bit then she went out to get lunch biendangs (a rather long time I thought—perhaps taking advantage of me being there to watch him.  I picture her skipping through XiMenDing yelling “I’m free!”  in Vietnamese, buying ice cream, trying on dresses, listening to pop CDs) and came back to wake him for lunch.  We sat him in the chair and she fed him XiFan while I held out a napkin every time he wanted to spit out something he didn’t like, which was almost every bite.  Though the analogy is overdone, I am still struck by how like a baby he is being so old—the diaper, plus feeding him “baby food” with the spoon, putting a bib round his neck and dabbing his mouth, then he leaned forward and we patted his back I guess to help him burp.  Except he is much quieter and more docile than a baby—and than most old men I’m sure. 

            I wished I had the PopTarts which I bet he’d like so much more.

           

            Went to the gym for first time since the stinky tofu attack, then Mafia JieFu’s family took me to dinner at a restaurant in the really fancy Grand Hyatt hotel.  I’d never been there before.  Dave says Taipei hotels aren’t that impressive compared to HK ones but now that I’ve seen both, I can’t say I agree.  When hotels are THAT nice, can another 5-star really be that much nicer than the next?  Jiefu was excited to show me two famous “Fu Jin”s and pointed at two large framed scrolls in the lobby.  I wasn’t sure what that meant and he explained that Chinese people understand their meaning, something about this place needing to keep good luck and protection since something bad used to happen here.  He also said there are rumors this hotel is haunted.  Long long ago a woman dressed herself up all in white and killed herself in this hotel.  After that there were rumors of ghost-sightings so several celebrities who were booked to stay here cancelled, saying they were scared of the curse.  I was fascinated but BiauJie kept telling him to stop telling horror stories.  The kids kept yelling “Guei!” (ghost) and like when the dishes came out JieFu would say things like, “[It’s Ghost fish!]” 

 

The restaurant was called Piau Liang which literally means “Pretty”, but they translated it “Pearl Liang”.  It was all of our first time there and very good, but he ordered too many apps that I got full on (one dish they highly recommended was “[Our special stinky tofu]” and I thought, “DOH!” but it turned out to be small deep-fried pieces, popcorn tofu, pretty good) and it was my first full meal since the attack, so my stomach filled up fast and I started feeling queasy again.  He knows I can usually eat like a trash compactor but today I stopped and just couldn’t go on, so they wrapped my beef entrée to take home.  My gift today was a Chinese/English illustrated dictionary which didn’t cause nearly the excitement as the I-Zone.

 

            They dropped me at Breeze Center where I was meeting Tricia to see The Recruit.  On the way I told them how I came to start teaching Apeh’s granddaughter (cousin Lucy); how I told them English teachers make 600/hr so they asked me to teach her, even though I really make 800, and how anyway I’m not supposed to take money from teaching relatives (Dad’s orders).  JieFu said next time, tell people I make 2000/hour, then no one will dare ask me to teach their kid.

 

Met Trish, asked her about the Hyatt rumors and she said the area used to be a site for executions, that’s why they needed the Fu Jin.  The calligraphy on the scrolls was actually done by Ginger’s godfather!

 

We got our tickets and tried twice to go in but they rejected us twice and didn’t admit us until five minutes before showtime (Tricia:  “I feel like we’re getting turned away at the door to a club.”)  I liked the movie; it was quite suspenseful and exciting and had more twists than a Wetzel’s factory.  But after all the hype about Colin Farrell’s hotness, he just didn’t lift my skirt.  Cute, but as Daisy said, “Too scruffy.  Scruffy guys aren’t my type.”  Scruffy always makes me think of dirty.  And stubble hurts, too scratchy.  But then, it’s good to have scruffy sometimes, the OPTION of scruffiness.  If a guy isn’t scruffy because he physically can’t GROW any scruff, that’s not so great either (think pale frail Taiwan boys).