Dis-orient-ed

Last night I had a dream- a very strange dream. Because I prefer not going into detail (more specifically, about the karaoke singing Amish relatives of Tyler Youngblood at a Halloween party- yes, strange, I know, so I will not expand on this point any further...), I will instead give you a brief overview of the dream.

I dreamed that I had returned early from Taiwan. I was amongst friends and family at a welcome home party. All was going well and I was more than delighted to see everyone. However, as the party went along, I started missing Taiwan more and more. I missed the foods, I missed the classes, and most importantly, I missed the people. Instantly, I became very upset with myself that I left Taiwan early! I left the party in a rage and hailed the first taxi cab to come in sight.

I hopped into the back of the cab and said, "Heping/ Fuxing" which is the intersection on which my apartment is located. The cabbie then proceeded to drive around Boston for the next hour or so searching for the intersection of "Heping/ Fuxing". Obviously, he did not find it.

I woke up from the dream in a state of panic! "Where am I?" I thought to myself. Slowly I came to realize that I was still here in Taiwan and it had all been a dream. I cannot explain to you the sense of relief I felt for waking up here in Taiwan. This was a truly reaffirming dream to have- to wake up and be delighted I was in a foreign country. It reminded me of how happy I am to be here and how lucky I am to have this opportunity to live and work in a country on the other side of the world.

In waking life, things are going quite well. I am settling into my working routine, but in Taiwan there is never a real routine! For instance, last week our refrigerator died. We asked the landlord (the Kramer of our Taiwanese apartment) to send a repair man to fix our refrigerator. Her solution was to send an aging British woman named Angela to see our fridge. It seems like she has a "friend" for everything. Well, the granny arrived to our apartment and looked at the fridge. She put some tape over the door and said, "Don't worry, it will heal itself."

We looked at her and said, "Ummm, this is an appliance. It is broken. Appliances will not heal themselves." She said to trust her, and we did. And as a reward for our trust, we got a lot of spoiled food. The landlady then said she would buy a new fridge but that would increase our rent by $500 a month (or $15 U.S.). We didn't like the sound of that, so we told her we would be going to a store to buy our own fridge and then sell it when we leave.

There is a great second hand appliance market in Taipei where you can get great appliances for cheap money. My roommate and I went to the market and purchased a new fridge and Television for $6,000, or about $180 U.S. An improvement over the $500 a month increase in rent which would have come out to $5,000 EACH PERSON by the time the lease was over!

The new fridge is here, and I tell it everyday how much I love it, so it will never break on me! Until next time, my faithful readers, from your cold beer drinking, fresh food eating, nightmare freaking, bargain seeking haggler of the orient, Michael.