Health Certificates, and a bit of Tea and Olympics

I need a health certificate that says I am healthy, for two reasons. The school that I want to go to says I need it, and the school that I do go to is required by law to say I need an ARC (something resident card) and I need a health certificate to get an ARC. And I need to be healthy to get a health certificate. I am healthy, but they don’t know that. “Are you healthy?” I told them yes, and they said I needed a health certificate. Okay. Where do I get a health certificate?

I decided I wasn’t an emergency, emergencies are not healthy. I walked past the emergency place, and found the main entrance. A monk was walking out. Monks are healthy. Why was the monk at the hospital? He smiled at me when I smiled at him. He seemed ok. Maybe he wants to teach English to little kids and a few adults. Or maybe he wants to learn Chinese. I guess his monastery might not believe him when he says he’s healthy. “You’re going to need a health certificate.” “I’m a monk, I’m healthy.” “I know, but we don’t believe you, you need to go to the doctor in Tainan and get a health certificate.” “Ok, where do I go?”

I walked past the smiling monk. I walked past the flowers, I looked at the information desk. There were a number of very old, unhealthy looking ladies behind the desk. “I think they need health certificates…maybe they’re waiting.” I walked past the old ladies who looked at me from their information, then thought better of it and let their gaze lead my feet to the front of the desk.

“你好，我要这个。” “Hey there, I need one of these,” and pointed at the brochure that said I needed to have a health certificate in Chinese. Out of nowhere a young information man walked up from behind and said he could help me. “Oh, your English is very good.” “Yes, I have a neighbor. I will stay with you while you get your certificate, ok?” Oh man, this is great. I can ask him all sorts of questions, learn medical terms and not get lost once. “First fill out this form and then fill out this form. They are the same.” I thought it’d be easier for everyone to just copy it, but I didn’t say anything and filled it out as completely as I could. “You have pictures?” I did have pictures of myself. Louis said to always have pictures when you thought you might fill out a form. “Okay. Two pictures. Ok. 五百” 500 dollars. Ok, not bad. I paid the lady behind the counter.

I turned around to start getting my health certificate and the young information man who was going to stay with me the whole time had turned into a middle aged healthy lady. “2^nd floor, Family Health, 三十號” and was gone. Okay. Number thirty, second floor. Up we go.

The numbers were ticking by the time I got to the family health room. 8, 9….9…9, 10… I’ll wait a bit. This old guy was staring at me from across the room from the second I walked in. He wasn’t very healthy. Though, sometimes health is deceptive. If I were the lady at the ARC office, or the head disbelieving monk, I wouldn’t believe him and would have sent him here. I sat down and he really started staring at me. He made me feel like I was doing something wrong.

“I must be doing something wrong.” I asked the lady at the counter in the Family Health office if I was doing anything wrong. She didn’t really answer, but took my papers from my hand and started typing on the computer. I looked over my shoulder and found the old guy smiling at me. Maybe the young information man who turned into the healthy middle aged lady had turned into the unhealthy old guy. Two more forms, two more pictures. They checked my blood pressure. 119 over 72. Height. 170 odd cm. Weight. 62 kg. Ok, quick math, they’re not lying. Ok.

The lady walked very quickly, down the hall, right, down another hall, left, down the escalator, left, left, down, right. Put this on. She gave me a gown. I went into the dressing room and changed. As I came out what I had mistaken for a giant metal wall was sliding back towards me. I got out of the way and peeked in. X-ray room.

Push your chest here, grab here, put your chin here, pull. The man spoke English well. Breathe deep…nothing…ok you can breathe again now. Exhale. Ok, not too bad.

Down several more hallways, to the front of the long line of unhealthy looking people. I think I got to go to the front because I was healthy. Maybe they were starting to believe me? One thousand dollars. Maybe they just wanted my money.

Backtrack, left right left right straight, up. We entered a room that looked like Bank of America. Instead of taking money, the tellers were taking blood. I went up to window 8 when my number was called. Half way through my trip from the standing position to the sitting position, the teller had already stuck me, bandaged me, and chastised me for not immediately putting pressure on the wound she gave me that I didn’t even know I had.

Backwards, left right left right, up the escalators, back to the Family Health room. The same unhealthy old man smiled at me while my tour guide vanished. The lady behind the counter asked me a lot of questions. Drink? Smoke? Coffee? Tea? Disease? She was filling out every question one step ahead of me answering them. Half were in English, half in Chinese. Sleep normal? Pee normal? Medication? Allergy? Vitamin? Vegetarian? “Yes.” … … … everything slowed down for a minute. “Oh, really?” Yes. “Oh…” And a smile, and then continued. Then, “Please sit a little while.”

“Jonasan Brown.” The real doctor called. She did the real examination. She pushed hard on most of my body and was young and nice and spoke English well. She also filled out the form in English. I don’t understand why. Spending time with her was nice. She was pleasant. Not rushed, she drank coffee from Starbucks. “Ok, all done.” “Am I healthy?” She laughed. “Of course!” I left the exam room, happy at least one person knew.

The lady behind the counter said a lot of things to me in Chinese. She gave me a small slip of paper, and said some more things. I could read the date on the paper, and maybe a few other things. So I left.

…

Mavis is the Taiwanese English teacher at the school where I teach. “Mavis, can you read this? I don’t really understand it.” Mavis read the hospital slip quickly. Then she read it more slowly, a second time… Then she paused. “I cannot understand.” Jesus. I will never be able to communicate in Chinese. Mavis asked Stacey, the administrator. “Can you understand this?” Stacey didn’t really read the slip, she just kind of glanced at it. “You need to go to the hospital on the 18^th to pick up your health certificate.”

And then I will be healthy and everyone will know it.

...

Today I finally spent some quality time at the tea shop. They were pleasant again, and we actually managed to communicate some more in Chinese. They were amazed and impressed that I am a vegetarian. And I think that they offered to take me to a tea farm where she goes not infrequently. I told her I was only available on the weekends. We also thoroughly discussed how much money I was making, and she said it was ok. Actually she said, bu cuo, that “not bad” term which I will continue to translate as “good”. I bought a little teapot from her, and she gave me a cup and a sniffer cup free. So now I can haphazardly drink tea at my place, using the 100 degree water from the water dispenser in the entrance. That’s nice.

Speaking of my place. I did end of taking Louis’ apartment. It does its job well. It is nothing fancy. Think of a longish room, running north south. You walk in at the north end, and immediately to the left there is a bathroom. The bathroom has a toilet and a shower head attached to the wall with consistently hot water. Go further south and you come to the main room, with a twin bed on the east side, a desk, TV and fridge on the west side. The fridge doesn’t work. Louis told the landlord before he left, and I think she came here and thought it was working cause the light came on when she plugged it in, but it isn’t. It probably won’t work till I leave or feel comfortable enough with my language abilities to talk to her about it, whichever comes first. It probably won’t work till I leave.

At the foot of the bed is a bookshelf and a dresser. On the south wall is a sliding door to a patio of sorts. Really, it’s just a space where I can hang my clothes to dry, enclosed by metal walls, maybe 5 by 4 feet or so. It lets natural light in during the day. The floors are tile, and there is a nice shelf under the mirror in the bathroom. There is also air conditioning.

The Olympics are on my television right now. I haven’t watched too much of them because I still don’t watch much TV. The New York Times seems more concerned with secessionist sections of Georgia vs Russia than the Olympics. But they are on here and there around town. Sometimes I’ll take my lunch with them. I’m glad they exist and get a tingly feeling in my stomach when I watch them.

I’ve been watching episodes of Lost at night before I go to bed. Originally it was a nice way to just kind of sit down at the end of the day, plus they’re easily accessible online. But after watching two in a row last night and wanting to watch a third, I’m getting a little worried about it.

Teaching is coming along, more on that later.

All the best,

Jonathan

Lat: 22°59'25.78"N Long: 120°13'19.87"E

Put those numbers into Google Earth if you want to see exactly where I live. Or if you want to blow me up. I don't think it will work to send me mail. But it might.

I was about to leave my school today when Steven showed up. He took me to the window (we're on the 5th floor) and pointed down the perpendicular road. "That is a good vegetarian restaurant. There, with the yellow sign, the 素食 (vegetarian house). You can go there and eat. If you have a bike you can go to the one further down (he points about a block further - Taiwanese people laugh at you if you tell them you walked more than a block. Louis and I received a round of belly gut laughter from Steven's family at dinner the other night when we answered if we had walked to the bank in the affirmative). I didn't have a bike, so I went to the one within walking distance (immediately across the street).

I walked in. This was the first restaurant I had visited without accompaniment. I realized this after I walked in. Some people looked up, well most everyone looked up. 我可以吃饭吗？ "Can I eat food?" "You can eat food, sit down."

The lady seemed nice, she got me the tea, the menu, and then stood at the table waiting to take my order. This took place over a time span of about 15 seconds. I glanced at her then back at the menu. I really wanted to ask for a minute to look. I don't know how to do that, at least not in any polite manner (I could probably muster a "Go away") but it didn't matter, everything on the menu was incomprehensible to me.

这个饭都没有肉吗？"None of this food has meat, right?" She looked at me quizzically (the sign outside said vegetarian house, after all) and repeated the question more or less and told me that none of it had meat. I think this tipped her off that I had really absolutely no idea what was going on. She spat out a long string of words, none of which I caught, save for the word "rice" a few times. When she was done, I couldn't think of anything to say except "你有白饭吗？ "Do you have white rice?"

Another really odd look, and then she said something along the lines of, Yes we have white rice...but I'm wondering what do you want to eat for your meal, and if you could just tell me we could get along with things. Really, she was very pleasant, but I just had no idea what was going on. I finally asked her 你喜欢什么饭？ What food do you like?

She laughed, pointed at something and said, "This one's not bad." That was funny. The phrase "not bad" in Chinese means pretty good. The best I ever got on a Chinese test was "not bad". Willing to eat food that tasted tantamount to my best effort on any given Chinese test, I said "I'll take that one."

It was very good (maybe I was a good student?). The whole restaurant happened to be at the counter when I paid. Each of them took their turn trying to speak to me with varying degrees of success. I finally admitted, "My Chinese is really very bad" which received some laughs. I followed up with a "You all cook food very well." Which was received with sincerity. I smiled and left, so I guess we're on good terms now and I'll probably go back and order the same thing. It's the second one down on page two.

My fingertips are thicker, and Taiwan has nice fruit after all

Well, that Leavenworth granite really did a number on my hands, but the double salve in conjunction with not climbing anything at all for a few days has put them into ready shape. They’re tough and want some action. Trouble is, there is no action to be had. I think there may be some rock climbing somewhere in Taiwan, but finding it will be an endeavor, and one that I’m just not ready to embark on yet. In the mean time my fingertips will find contentment in peeling god’s perfect fruit: the banana. I don’t know how much it cost me, but all together the two bananas and two oranges ran me about 85 centavos. So far the fruit is in the top three of the fruit I’ve ever had in my life. Somewhere up there with those avocados in Costa Rica and such…

Yesterday was good. Louis had some business to attend to. Namely he needed to close the bank account and ship the books to China. The bank account went all right once we got to the right bank. There are two branches of the National Bank of Taiwan here in Tainan. The one we went to could have drawn his account down to zero and closed it for him, but it would have taken four days. Louis had about 24 hours. So we didn’t walk and didn’t bus to the other side of town cause the first was hot and muggy and life inspring and the second was damn near impossible. The taxis are pretty convenient though, air conditioned and all, if a bit expensive as things go. I guess it’s cause of the paper, which is to say the banks here have large piles of paper everywhere and the amount of money they can dispense to you at any given time due to the balance of money you have in your account is kept on paper. And your name is kept on paper, with your signature. If your signature at the bank is not the exact same as the signature they have on the paper, they make you do it again. Many people but little signature-stamps for this reason, much like you would see in old Chinese artwork or something. Many people wait in line for alont time, also for this reason: they have to go get the paper from the pile and cross check it with the paper they’re about to add to the file. So I think what would have had to happen is that Louis would have signed his name saying he wanted to close the account. Bank1 would then send the paper to Bank2 with the signature. Bank2 would cross reference the signature with the pile, and then send the paper back to Bank1. Takes about four days. We went to Bank2. It only took 45 minutes.

In that way Taiwan is really efficient. You just gotta know how to get in the 45 minute line. But that took most of the day, so the boxes waited till today. The post office doesn’t sell boxes. You have to buy them from 7-11, or another authorized distributor. The line was short, but the paper filling out to send the boxes to China took about 40 minutes, then there was probably some more pile-paper-signature cross referencing, which took about 20 minutes. I guess we were in the 1.25 hour line today, I’m not sure if it’s the fast or slow one but it cost about US$200. China is big, I suppose, but I’m pretty sure they’re not even going to get there, so it’s a lot of money for spending quality time with the nice post office lady to throw your books away. They may get there, but Harbin gets real cold, like -30C cold, so they may freeze too.

Last night Steven took Louis and me out to dinner. I think he does this with new international teachers, but maybe this was particularly fancy because Louis was leaving and I was coming and there was overlap and we know each other. Steven is the professor and owner of Happy Valley American Language School or shenme shenme 美国学 except in traditional which Microsoft doesn’t believe in. Steven is also Buddhist and a vegetarian. He did know that I was a vegetarian too, but I think got caught up in treating us to a nice dinner. So it was Japanese/Korean BBQ. And it went something like this:

“Oh…Oh, oh, oh, Jonasan, I am so sorry. Oh, yes, I know that, I know, but oh, I forgot…Oh, yes I know you are vegetarian, but I forgot, oh oh oh Jonasan.”

I assured him it was all right because he is also vegetarian, and we could eat similar things. And that’s what we did, which was also nice because there was some degree of camaraderie and it was really nice. It was a very chic place. Picture something you would see if some like rich Korean people came to Belltown and had some Japanese people help design the place and had lots of Taiwanese friends but wanted to cater to a kind of Western population that liked Asian things a lot. The tables were low to the ground so you thought you were going to sit cross legged, but then there was an inconspicuous pit in the floor right under the table so you actually could just sit like you were in a chair kind of thing. But it was really good, and Steven’s wife and two daughters came.

I fell asleep in the car around 9:30pm on the way to silken tofu dessert in Anping district of Tainan, which is on the Ocean. My jet lag feels a bit better tonight, but I wasn’t having it last night. I woke up long enough to eat tofu and red beans, and fell asleep long enough to get home, and woke up long enough to go to bed.

So it was a nice orientation and nice to know that Steven cares about poor little me and has a family and a soul and I really like them all quite a bit.

I also think the school is going to work out. I will have three classes of younger-ish kids, which I will teach every day for 40 minutes apiece. I will also have a test-prep class of more mature but still youngish kids twice a week for one hour each class, as well as a class of 5 adults twice a week for two hours at a time. I taught the adults and the youngish older kids today for the first time without a hitch – it will be really interesting to see if they actually learn anything over time though. Tomorrow I will get my first go with the younger ones… they really liked Louis a lot.

That’s what I’m up to. The landlord suggested I learn Chinese really fast so she can communicate with me, and then smiled a big nice smile. I think I’m going to take her advice best as I can. Matt, check out chinesepod.com

Also, Louis wasn’t a big tea critic, I guess. I asked him about tea several times and I got back information that would fall more into the 7-11/Bubble Tea/sugary stuff more than anything else. Today, while he was teaching and I wasn’t watching I went on my mini-first excursion. I got dry erase makers and stumbled upon a 茶馆 which may or may not be correct simplified for cha guan. Anyhow, the lady reminded me of Lydia on the kindness scale, and her daughter was there and she wants me to teach her English, which would be easy cause she’s in high school and also cause she already seemed to know quite a bit, and also attractive cause I could probably spend hours at the tea shop. Anyway 他们有阿里山茶 and it ran me like 15 bucks. I can’t wait to see how it is. Love to all. Jonathan.

Some sentimental notes

This trip, while having been planned for a long time, is one of the scariest things I've done. The months weeks and days before I left did not feel any different than the years and decades of the rest of my life, but in my head I knew my life was about to be so different, even if my heart didn't comprehend it. On Sunday, though, everything started to come crashing down: it was so hard to pack, so hard to say goodbyes (I'm not good at them anyhow) so hard to go to meditation, so hard to eat, so hard to finally make myself leave my friends at the airport.

I couldn't help but wonder what I was doing. I have such a great situation in Seattle, with so many people I love, and such comfort. My trip began to feel like a crazy decision, and one that would last for a long, long time. (Reminiscent of Matt's apartment with Peter and Matt, or the long walk down 14th Ave. where we didn't quite make it to the park.) More than anything the anticipation of such a desolate feeling of isolation began to haunt me. Despite all those feelings, despite the surreal day I had, I got on the plane. I immediately began to feel better. Instead of seeing everything I know vanish before my eyes, new experiences would now be coming to me. I continually felt better through the bus ride, the train ride, and the car ride from the train station. But as soon as those new experiences stopped, as soon as I laid down in Louis' apartment for a rest, the feelings of sadness, longing, isolation, and a degree of insanity came back - though I think not as intense as before. I think this emotional vacillation will continue for a while, but I also think my emotions will eventually converge to a more stable state. I'm sure these first few days and weeks will be tough, but I think I will learn an exceptional amount, and grow in ways that didn't really avail themselves in the oh so comfortable United States of America.

Technically speaking, on the other hand, everything is fine. The roads seem exceptionally dangerous, but the people are equally harmless. The electric outlets are the same.

For those who are aware that I lost it, my camera was found, though a bit run over I think, in front of Alison's apartment. At least the pictures are salvaged of that wonderful breakfast.

My backpack is very very comfortable.