Wednesday 9/11: Remembering
9/11
This
morning whenever I remembered it was 9/11, I would get a heavy sad feeling,
even though it was business as usual around here, and that made me feel even
more alone in my sadness.
I quickly
looked over my test material. This
time I remembered to take the underground walkway toward my bus stop until I
remembered Doh, I used up my bus card yesterday and needed to buy a new
one. That was good because I
hadn’t had one of those ChuanJia buns in awhile. Daring girl that I am, I’ve stopped getting red bean and now
pick a different one each time, not knowing what’s inside til I eat it. Being illiterate and unable to read
food wrappers allows me to do this.
In a rush, got the bus ticket and started eating the bun at the stop—it
was custard inside, like vanilla pudding.
Pretty good. Life is like a
ChuanJia bun, ya never know what you’re going to get.
Looked
over my test material on the bus too and this time got ready to get off well
before my stop, I’m getting better. I saw Stella ahead and she waited and we walked in together
talking about how we don’t understand that SV/VP/VO (Stative Verb, Verb Phrase,
Verb Object) nonsense, then waited outside the classroom for the 8AM class to
finish. The big girl who always
dresses all in black from DeGuo (STILL don’t know what that is) whose name is
Huei, was waiting as was the girl with dark skin and curly hair and glasses
from Vancouver, Ange. Stella
peeked in to check out the boys and Ange said “There are no good-looking ones,
I looked already!”
In class,
they all sat at the center of the U and so I moved to be next to them too. I change my seat everyday to feel the
different dynamics of the class, it’s very interesting. The center seems to revolve around
Stella who is already the most popular and interesting. She’s lively yet apathetic, pretty yet
not “done-up” pretty, outgoing yet bored, dresses funky yet casual, has that
Britishy accent, and is probably the first person we’ve all ever met from South
Africa. The tall fair skinned
(American) girl with conservative wardrobe (think black or navy J Crew/Banana
Republic staples), Daisy, is next.
Angie and Huei are on the other side. Between me and Stella is the French girl, Judith, who seems
older, asks the teacher the most questions in rapid Chinese and thus seems to
alienate the others with her genuine academic interest. The boy (Eric) came in and looked at
the available seats, a little confused I was in his, and sat next to me,
assuming his slump under his baseball cap, only punctuated intermittently by
the frequent checking of his cellphone.
Next came the tall, tan, quiet (American) girl with streaked hair and
casual college-y wardrobe, Ginger.
Last the small, cute baby-faced girl from UCLA (Debbie) and the quiet sleepy-eyed pale girl, ShauTing,
also from DeGuo. They were on the
two ends of the U and seemed the most set back from the giggly center of the
U. I liked my seat, in the corner,
observing. No wonder Eric likes
that seat.
The
teacher passed around the sheet with all our names, birthdates (no year),
Chinese Zodiac, interests, email and phones. I was the only Dragon and also the only one who wrote
Writing and Snowboarding. About 9
people wrote Watch movies and several others, Exercise. Stella wrote Sleep. Judith wrote Drink alcohol (she insisted
she wrote Pubs and the teacher translated it to Drink alcohol). Likewise, I wrote Writing and she
translated it to Write Words. I
wondered how young they all were.
I knew people one year younger would be Snakes and 2 years younger would
be Horses. I only saw 2 Snakes,
and no Horses.
The
test was fine, Eric finished first and promptly opened his newspaper, I turned
it in and went to email during the break.
On the 7th floor is the student “lounge” where I saw Steven
wearing an “I [heart] NY” shirt. I
told him and his friends about the candlelight vigil at AIT (American Institute
in Taiwan) tonight and we said maybe we’d meet up there.
I picked
up a lunchbox from the lady on the sidewalk again, and waited for the bus to
NTU MC, early. The bus 15 takes
forever and the heat was high noon.
The elevator up to 15th isn’t air-conditioned (neither is
ShiDa’s) and I have started this trick when I’m stifling, unbearably hot. Stand perfectly still, don’t fidget,
and imagine yourself in the coldest possible situation, painfully
cold—naked in a snowstorm, or plunging into an ice-covered lake, wind whipping
at your face, etc. It really
works.
My office,
room 1524 was locked, and I knocked.
The lights were out but 2 girls, longer-haired Giun and another I didn’t
know, were chatting. I went to my
desk, glad it’s nice and private with the window and partition from the room,
and devoured lunch which wasn’t as good this time (a skimpy portion of
un-deveined shrimp, the rice and veggies actually looked dirty).
Promptly
the room went silent and I thought they’d left but I’d never heard the
door. I got up to look and their
heads were on the desk. I’m amazed
at this lunchtime nap thing. I
think it’s a great idea and wish Americans were more accepting of it. We are stupidly stubborn about some
things, like charging through the day, believing napping to be a sign of
laziness.
So I laid
my head down too, but I always get lots of gas from doing that and it makes me
burp. When I got up, even though I
didn’t think I fell asleep, I was really refreshed—no nodding off like I have
the past two days. I read and did
two hours of poring through Medline with Ovid, and at 5PM Dr. C walked in to
see how I was doing. My eyes and
head hurt from staring at the screen, I was the last left in the room and Guin
gave me an office key. I lost my
search when I tried to print, confounded Ovid! Patricia tried to help me, then brought me downstairs to the
basement floor to get dinner, showing me the Burger King, 7-11 and 3 different
resturant/takeout places that close at 7.
We got takeout boxes and I left at 7:45 for the vigil.
To get to
AIT I had to take the Brown MRT line for the first time which has tons of
stairs going up because the line switches from being under- to above-ground and
you feel it getting hotter as you ascend.
But in the train it was cool again and now I could see the city below, which was pretty. The stop let out at a Gold’s gym and it
was quite a walk. I wondered how I
would recognize AIT, this area was all small storefronts. Maybe it was just in a small floor of a
building. How would they fit
everyone, holding candles? But
then I came to a big wall with lots of serious-looking cops and saw the sign. I
asked a cop who pointed me down further, this happened two more times until I
was led to a door where they put my bag through a scanner, a white guy asked
for my passport but all I had was my ARC, and went through another door to a
courtyard where about 200 people were.
It looked like a happy social hour with drinks. On closer look I realized they were
holding the unlit candles, with cups as candle holders. I got one at the table, lit it and it
burned like mad with abnormal amounts of smoke.
First there was a moment of silence
during which I watched my madly smoking candle and tried not to think about how
my face was going to be covered in soot.
I didn’t see anyone I knew.
They brought in the American flag and an official raised it, then slowly
lowered it to half mast as everyone watched in silence, during which I kept
thinking, What if it got stuck right now, and he started struggling and tugging
at it? That would be pretty
awkward. At one point it made a
squeaking noise. It looked limp,
there was no wind to unfurl it.
The heat from all the candles added to miserable heat. The director then said, “This is the first time this flag has
flown here in 23 yrs.” I wondered,
Why? Isn’t this the AIT?
He said some predictable things
like thanking friends in Taiwan for their help, thanking everyone for coming to
commemorate this day, then read a speech by George W. Bush that was apparently
genericized and distributed to all the American Institutes in other countries
doing this. Then we sang the
national anthem (“As printed in your program,” he said. What program? And who would look, to let everyone know they don’t know the
words by heart?), then he “invited us to blow out our candles.” The whole thing took under 20
minutes.
Steven found me, with some other people from school. We agreed it had been rather, uh, short, and we’d both expected more, like maybe a slideshow of the WTC collapse. Not that I need to see that again.
We walked
back to the MRT, chatting about school and various things, and life went on
without a hitch here, thousands of miles away from America, where people were
just waking up to the day.