Friday 11/8/02               Being Bums at Naomi, Clowns at Juliana

 

            No plans.  Stella was planning to watch a DVD at home and Jonathan’s in HuaLien for the weekend.  I was determined to hold onto my “I won’t go out unless I’m asked, I will not initiate” mantra.  Sure enough I got an email from Niclas about a happy hour at Shannon’s given by AmCham, the “American Chamber of Commerce,” whatever that was.  Told Ginger and tried to reach Niclas but couldn’t get through, so she and I went ourselves and as I peered through the crowd looking for the drinks and free food, I became aware of a guy staring at me right in front of me and it was Brad.  I cracked up as they both laughed at me and Gin said, “I was wondering why you guys were staring at each other and not saying anything.”  The drink specials were good, 80NT for bottled beer or glass of wine, which I got.  But the food was on tables where people were sitting so you’d have to reach over them as they talked which was awkward, so I didn’t eat much and was starving. 

 

The crowd was like a somewhat older version of the Oriented happy hour.  A 50-ish year old Chinese guy came up to us and started talking and pointed out a TV star at another table that none of us knew, and when he learned I went to Yale he said, “Oh, the worst school!”  And added that he went to a school “as worst as you.” I guessed, “Harvard? Princeton?”  But he meant Yale too.  I think he was just trying to make a joke, which blew.

 

“What did you study there?” I asked. 

“The worst thing you can study at Yale!” 

“Oh, law.”  Of course.

Found out he’s got 2 degrees from Yale, one in law, so we got to talking and exchanged cards; he’s in tax and patent law.  I figured it might be good to know a lawyer around here, just in case.  I told him about the reverse discrimination that we HuaChau get here, and how it’s harder for people like me to find say, English teaching jobs since many people prefer white teachers, thinking they know English better.  He said the same thing happens in law; many people prefer to hire a white lawyer.  I thought that was strange; wouldn’t you rather hire a lawyer from your own country that knows your country’s laws well? 

 

After a while I made a move to get away and we went to find real food to eat so we headed to a nearby mall’s basement.  At the same time, Niclas called to say he just got to the happy hour at Shannon’s and was looking for us, sitting by himself.  We called him to let him know we could meet him at this mall food court.  But when we arrived, all the eateries were closed (it was 10ish).  We thought it’d be funny to keep going to another place and keep calling Niclas to tell him we moved: “You’re almost caught up with us, I think I can see you!”  But the other two, being more considerate than I, said we better wait for him.  When he arrived, we all headed to the famous 24-hr DimSum place at ChungHsiao DunHwa that Dave’s mentioned to me before.  Only Gin and I hadn’t eaten and were hungry, but we over-ordered and some reason we ended up paying 400NT each.  How does the money go so fast?

 

            Headed to lounge Naomi where Gin’s “other friend who is corrupting me in Taiwan”, Tricia, was with friends.  Naomi is very posh, chic, upscale, glamorous.  The people were all beautiful, tall, and wearing black.  We all felt quite bummy in comparison.  At Tricia’s table were some of those people (you have to buy a table and apparently it’s hard to get a reservation) who didn’t look so pleased to see us—got a rather cold reception and no introductions, except for Tricia (We both said, “I’ve heard a lot about you”.  Gin said, “Oh no, the two of you together!”  I said, “But the difference is she can drink, I can’t!”)  I sat kind of awkwardly with Gin as Niclas went to the bar to order, then happily volunteered to help him carry the drinks.   I told him about the cold reception and he said, “What d’you expect, you showed up with a couple of white guys.”  I said That’s true and asked, “Do you guys only get that treatment from Chinese guys?”  And he said there actually weren’t problems with Taiwanese guys, it’s the ABC’s that are worst.  “But shit flies both ways.”  It’s true, and dumb.  Stella said at Room 18 once, one of the UCBerkeley ABCs didn’t know Dave was their friend and almost beat him up when he was dancing with Stella and Chris, basically hating him just because he was white. 

 

Gin and I ordered Cosmos but I couldn’t taste any alcohol at all so I asked the bartenders to kindly add some more, then it was much better.  We all squished around the table.  One girl had bright dyed blond hair.  Another who was very pretty with short hair and looked a bit like Shawna, ordered a very elaborate pink sorbet and yogurt concoction.  Brad kept disappearing for lengths of time and we wondered if he was having bathroom problems. 

 

At around 2 we got itchy for a new venue; I suggested Juliana’s and Tricia heartily agreed.  At Juliana’s we did the required round of tequila shots that Brad had been waiting to do and danced almost the whole time.  Someone commented they hadn’t seen Gin’s camera much tonight and she suddenly remembered, “Oh yeah!” so out it came and on the dance floor she took tons of pictures of us being silly.  Every time I saw that cam pointing at me I felt like I had to do something stoopid.  Once she tried for a different angle and held the camera down low, pointing it upward.  Niclas stuck his palm in front of it in a wave.  I was about to do the same but decided copying him was lame, so at the last moment, not able to think of anything else, I flipped my hand around and let my middle finger say hello, Eminem-style.  How sad that this is how my mind works in desperate moments.  A smart thing would have been to turn my face away or cover it, but no, there it is in the background grinning idiotically.  I figured she’d delete it though; she certainly wouldn’t put it on her webpage, or put a caption on it announcing “Grace is flipping the bird” or anything like that…

 

We saw a group of very enthusiastic Cantonese guys next to us who were dancing like crazy.  Niclas was kindly holding my jacket and my Prada bag for me, the jacket tied tightly around his waist and the bag on his shoulder.  He looked hilariously gay and he danced over to the guys’ circle; they got even more excited at his presence, and Ginger held up her camera discreetly taking pics from all angles (albeit the flash was going off every few minutes), often sticking out the camera barely glancing at the viewfinder, and it was one of the funniest scenes ever.  They kept playing Korean or Cantonese songs we didn’t know but as each came up, the crowd would go wild.  After we left the dance floor one of the Cantonese guys kept talking to Niclas, who said one sentence [“I can’t speak Cantonese”] in Cantonese; the guy jumped and exclaimed, then held Niclas’ hand and said with great awe and solemn sincerity that he has never met someone “like you” who can speak Cantonese: “This is the first time ever.”  He quickly shook hands with us all but focused on Niclas, asked for his number and told him they were spending another night somewhere next week and to join them.  I kept giggling saying “It’s my purse!  It’s all because of my purse!”  Niclas gave it back to me and Gin protested, “But you’ll lose your Mojo!”  He said sarcastically, “Thanks for stepping in and saving me!”  But the next moment he was linked arm and arm with the guy downing test tube shots.  I said, “Niclas, you don’t need us to save you, you’re bringing this on yourself!”

 

            By now I was quite “buzzing” with energy and asking where to next, skipping on the street and running in circles.  Finally we went to the Eslite bookstore café where we had some dessert and tea.  The menu said there were two kinds of cake but when I asked, the waiter he said the second “cake” was BingGan, which is cookie.  I politely corrected him, “[Your menu translated this wrong, it should say ‘Cookie’, not ‘Cake’ for BingGan.]”  Everyone shook their heads at me and sighed, but I insisted I was helping them out.  I declared from now on I’m going to correct all incorrect English translations when I see them, voluntarily and without being asked.  They should be so grateful for my free public service.

 

             The quiet, soft-jazz atmosphere sapped our energy, and we split up for home.