Thursday 10/3/02  Lost Green Card

 

I’d told Ginger and Stella that whoever got to class latest the next day would buy first round on Friday night.  I got there first, and when Ginger arrived next I said “Stella lost!” 

She never showed up. 

 

At work JiauJu helped me try to wire my rent money to Juling at the ATM downstairs, but I needed my ARC # and when I looked through my wallet, it was gone.  I hadn’t looked at it in awhile, and worried a little, wondering if I’d taken it clubbing and had taken it out of my wallet and transferred it to a small bag, figuring I’d check at home.

 

Had dinner with Kate, Gary, Jake, and Gary’s 2 friends from the Taiwan law firm at an all you can eat Beijing restaurant near me.  It was 220 per person but if you didn’t finish everything on the table you had to pay what was left, so we didn’t go crazy ordering and in the end I wondered if I really ate 220 worth.  After that we stopped at the mango drinks and ice dessert place of the popular chain, and Gary recommended a drink with mango, coconut and green stuff.  I asked what the green was and he said “You’ll think this is really weird, but it’s aloe.”  I’ll try anything once (if not a disgusting animal part) and he said it was good, so I got it.  The aloe didn’t have much flavor, was a little sweet and very gooey, but the thought of having it was a little weird, because I couldn’t stop thinking of hand lotion, and I think next time I’ll just get coconut and mango.

 

            At home I searched everywhere but couldn’t find my ARC.  The plastic sleeve I’d held it in was torn almost all the way so it must have fallen out.  I worried.  I wonder if people can use it somehow for fraud?  I did find one more August receipt as I was searching and decided to check its number on the internet when I got to work—my other ones hadn’t won the lottery. 

 

 

Friday 10/4  Gray’s Bar and Club TU

 

During break I called AIT and they are so unhelpful—it’s a bunch of recordings, listing all options in English, THEN in Chinese, as I watched the money counting down off my phone card.  No options said anything about ARCs, so I left a message in English with my cell #.  After class I checked messages and they’d left a message in CHINESE that they couldn’t help and I needed to go to blah blah to take care of it.  Can we put the DUH in DUMB?  This is the AMERICAN Institute of Taipei, and considering I left my message in ENGLISH, isn’t it obvious I would like a return message in ENGLISH also?

 

Hot again as hell the past few days, the weather keeps tricking me and summer doesn’t want to leave.  For the first time I missed New Haven in a way, thinking how the leaves were falling and all colorful, remembering how the air starts to get crisp, the drives on the winding CT roads, lined with brilliant trees.  But for the most part I don’t miss it of course.  I already take for granted sometimes the beauty of this city.  Palm trees I hardly notice anymore even though to me they used to represent vacations, tropical paradise.  Every day I pass the CKS memorial hall that shines white and looks freshly painted by day, glows with lights by night.

 

At work I found the stray receipt DID have matching 3 numbers so I won 200NT, yay!  I told JiauJu who said Wow, you’ve just been here 1 month and already won, and that she hasn’t won in so long.  We used my passport # for the bank transfer and succeeded in transferring my rent $, and found that I couldn’t claim my lotto money until next week.

 

            She told me AIT had said I needed to go back to the police station to get the new ARC, so I went and it was a 2 hour ordeal going, waiting in line, having FSE re-fax the work document, withdrawing $ from their ATM for the fee, and re-xeroxing my passport.  Didn’t they already have a copy of my original ARC on file with all this info?  I’d have to come back Wednesday to pick it up, and from then on will guard it with my life.

 

At 6 I hurriedly finally printed out my summary and stats on US and Taiwan healthcare expenditures and casemix for Dr. Cheng who nodded and said Very good.  I wondered if he really wondered, “That’s ALL you’ve done in 5 weeks?”  but he doesn’t seem to mind me keeping to myself.  He said we’d set a weekly meeting time “but if you don’t feel you need to meet, we can just skip it or do twice a month” and then asked YuJung and ChiYuan to “test” me and see how my Chinese has improved.  Then he remembered they haven’t yet taken me for a nice welcome lunch so promised to take me soon, and YuJung told him I like pizza.  He shook his head and said the pizza in US is totally different, Taiwanese people like thick crust, but in the US it’s very thin and with lots of toppings, describing it like it was so unappetizing.  I rubbed my tummy and said, [“SO good!”]  and they laughed at me. 

 

Jio Ma was taking Mom and me to dinner for her last night and they instructed me to meet them at the 7-11 on Hoping East between ShiDa and Guting station, which was exactly where I was supposed to meet Stella later, but I couldn’t go straight to meet her because I had to change.  We went to a Japanese restaurant in a lane, a nice place and had dishes that I’d never had at a Japanese place before. 

 

I will dare say that the Japanese here is the best I’ve ever had, even than Japan.  We had an egg made with the white floating in soy sauce, the yolk rare, and scallions on top.  A very soft fried “tofu” that was really made of egg.  Tuna, salmon and yellowtail sashimi.  JioMa instructed us to put a thin tiny lime slice on the sashimi and the wasabi, soy sauce and shredded turnip on top.  I looked at her plate and no lime rind was on it.  She ate the whole thing.  I picked out the lime seeds and stared at this rind, wondering, and went ahead.  Again, will try anything at least once.  It was very citrusy and I couldn’t even taste the fish.  Mom squinted, wrinkled her nose and we both said, Um, it’s…different. 

JioMa belches something fierce, every so often.  Mom and I politely ignore it, and I admire how Mom doesn’t even flinch when it happens mid-sentence, because I find it terribly distracting.

 

Mom gave me a dolly cart laden with food and water so I dragged it along, said goodbyes, and by the time I went home and changed it was 10:20 and I’d said I’d meet Stella at 10:45.  The subway took forever, there seemed to be a delay, and as more and more people came to wait, it was packed.  I called her again to say I’d be 10 minutes late.  I ended up getting there a little after 11, all apologetic.  They two were decked out again with nice high heeled shoes and full makeup, and we went in, to a bar called Gray’s.  I felt a little lost without Ginger but decided to just have fun.  Joe the birthday boy was already really trashed, totally drunk.  Then Gary, Kate and her brother came and had read the sign outside that we couldn’t, so they told me the special tonight was 50NT tequila shots.    

 

The owner was a youngish looking ABC guy.  He was reeeealy, suspiciously nice to Gary when he saw him waiting for drinks and even told him the Heineken wasn’t cold so suggested another beer.  Stella joined us for a couple rounds of shots, I think I had 3 total, it wasn’t very strong tequila.  They were using some no name brand.  I told Gary how at People we saw the bartenders refilling regular bottles with other stuff and he nodded knowingly.

 

They brought out a cake for Joe, John kept snapping digi photos left and right but looking after his brother, worried.  I went out to talk with Gary and co. and the conversation was about how his various friends approach girls.  He had one friend who came to Taiwan and didn’t know any Chinese, and just asked how to say “You like?”  (“Ni shi hwan ma?”)  So he would go up to cute girls, point at himself, and say, “Ni shi hwan ma?”  I giggled.  Gary said, “Yes!  They would giggle just like you’re doing.  He got the most action of any of us.” 

 

            Kate suggested we go to Vibe, the club that doesn’t open til 2AM—apparently places know when people come from another place and when they leave for another, so people go somewhere til 2, then somewhere from 2 to 4, somewhere else from 4-6, and so on!!  Crazy!

 

            Stella introduced me to 3 more German guys, Chinese cousins called Ichi and DeHua, and a black guy Essi, all who spoke really good Chinese and English.   They were going to TU, a hip hop club.  Kate suggested I go and use her free pass, the photo on it didn’t look like me, but didn’t look like her either.  They were too tired and went home.  Stella and Chris, John and Joe were heading home too, even though Joe wanted to go to Room 18 because some singer Elva was there.  I’d asked, “Who’s Elva?” and he’d given me a shocked, hurt look so immediately I said, “I mean, Elva’s coming!  Yay, I’m so excited!” and clapped my hands in mock glee, he hit me with his meager drunken strength.  So as John was carrying tons of bookbags and things, yet also balancing Joe, Joe was babbling, “Must go Room 18!  Elva’s waiting for me!  Hello Elva, I really like your CD.  Hello Elva how are you?  I have your CD,”  etc. 

 

I was curious about TU but hesitant; Stella assured me the German guys were safe and cool.  But what if I got tired and wanted to go home?  Essi assured me to say whenever I wanted to go.   

 

TU was small, an OK crowd and the music too chill when we arrived but it picked up, and they played JaRule, P Diddy, JayZ and so on.  DeHua had an injured leg and didn’t dance, while Ichi was an awesome dancer, a natural who threw around moves carelessly like he was made of rubber, like the guy in the Levis commercial, and like the Asian guy from the Yale undergrad dance troupe who Dave and I thought was the best Asian dancer we’ve ever seen.  He and his gf were very cute and mushy, apparently they take turns going to Germany and Taiwan to visit each other.  Essi and DeHua kept talking and I assumed they were checking out girls.  I spotted the very made-up girl from the night at Juicy, here with some girl friends. 

 

DeHua found out I work at NTU MC and said he’s been there doing his rotation.  But he’s going back to Germany Sunday, to finish his last year of med school.  There were a few girls wearing homey outfits—baggy jeans and backward caps, pigtails and lots of dark makeup—showing off their well-rehearsed hip hop moves on the stage.  Essi kept darting them looks of terror and telling me they scared him:  “Hau ke pa!  I think she could kick my ass.”  I danced a long time and sat down finally tired, and we decided to go, they were going to Room 18 now and would drop me home.  I’d given them my card and we said maybe we’d go somewhere else tomorrow.

 

            It was 5 when I got home and when I was showered and going to bed, light was coming in through my window.