A fact of life for me in Taiwan is that I am different. I walk down a street and can see over the heads of 90% of the people walking ahead of me. Restaurant staff go out of their way to greet me with a "Hah-lor", tripping over each other to get to me first and smiling and giggling excitedly. Children stare at me and tug on their parents' hands, saying Mama, Baba, ni kan - wei gwor ren ("Mother, Father, look - a foreigner"). One day in a shopping centre, a father chose to ignore his son's observation, which only made the little boy repeat it again and again, each time with increasing volume, until the little imp stood right in front of me, looking up and shouting his refrain at me, as if I was a magnificent statue that was entitled to special notice. I did the statuesque thing and glared menacingly down at him, which shut him up and sent him whimpering back to his father's side.

The one place I find refuge from my uniqueness is in my home. I don't jump with fright when I see myself in the mirror - I'm not old enough to do that yet - and I don't giggle excitedly at reflections of myself. I can be myself and feel that while I'm in my home I am no different to my neighbours. Until a few weeks ago, that is.

I wrote in "Being Tickled Pink" that everyone on my lane, encouraged by one of our neighbours, had mounted flower pots on our outside walls. Our lane, admittedly, looks very pretty, and for a while I felt conformist and part of the group. Then disaster struck! While everyone else's flower pots were filled with beautiful blooms, mine had none. Only the greenery seemed to be flourishing as my plant stubbornly refused to blossom. I aggressively watered the damn thing for nearly two weeks, trying to get it to look like all the others on the lane and then finally it started blooming beautiful light pink blossoms. The only problem is that all my neighbours have dark red blossoms in their pots now. I can't win!

When you come to visit me, my house is the one with the significantly different pink flowers.

14 February 2003

Dion Marc Delport

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