In Continuum.

So halfway through the trip here, I knew that I shouldn't follow in my sister's footsteps at all. Doing nothing is a beautiful thing to do, but to do nothing in her fashion is as good as playing dead in your bathroom for a week straight. She was turning into a corpse without her knowing it, and there was something about the way she'd sleep until two in the afternoon everyday that seemed oddly strange and unfair, especially how she is able to fall asleep twelve hours later faster than you can spell the word 'Hippopotamus'. I wanted something to do outside of the house, even if it is about going out and doing nothing at all. Besides, this time around in Taiwan, I had the responsibility of meeting Jeannie and taking care of her as long as she was away from her tour group. Meeting a friend overseas, definitely a first for me. In fact, the excitement could hardly be contained last night, and I lost a lot of sleep due to those spinning thoughts - then again, I was experiencing a serious case of sugar rush at that time, blame it on the cake I ate before bedtime. Anyway, I had a mission this morning, which was more than just the journey to town. I had to bring Jeannie around for awhile, make sure that nothing happens to her while she was with me. So, I stepped out of the house armed with the usual, but no clue about anything whatsoever.

You see, I made it as far as the front gate of my estate when I started to think to myself," Alright, I'm lost." Don't get me wrong, I knew where I was and knew where I had to go. But I didn't know how to get there completely. I didn't know what bus to take, where to take the bus, where to stop if I do arrive in Taipei if I do not end up three hundred kilometers in the opposite direction, and I didn't even know if the whole idea of taking a bus up to Taipei was feasible at all. So I walked down the sidewalk to a place with a bunch of buses, because I figured I'd have more chances getting to Taipei with any one of those buses than to stand at where I was to pray for a kind hearted hitchhiker. Taiwanese are nice and warm hearted people for sure, but I don't suppose any one of them would have stopped for a person dressed in black all over the place, and a hoodie covering half of his head - not the friendliest person you want to find at the side of the road, that's for sure. Anyway, without knowing how to get to the place I wanted to go, all I had was luck and a bunch of money in my bag. Oh yes, and a whole lot of laziness when it came to research last night. So sue me.

Anyway, here's the thing about going to a country where they drive on the opposite side of the road. If you are a driver, you may - like my Dad, turn to the wrong side of the road when you are at a function, coming face to face with oncoming cars. Or, you may have done the same dumb thing as me this morning at the bus stop when I looked for the bus in the wrong direction. You see, cars in Taiwan drives on the right, which means that if you are standing at the bus stop waiting for a bus, it would naturally come from the left hand side and not the right. But there I was, looking at the tail lights of the cars and wondering how come none of the cars were facing the right direction. It was great that I didn't have anybody around me when it happened, or else I would have became the laughing stock for the rest of the year, and I'm pretty sure the rest of next year too. But anyway, a bus came with "Taipei Main Station" flashing on top of the windshield, and I figured that it would be a good place to drop before I head on down to Taipei 101 to meet Jeannie and her family, minus her Dad, plus her uncle and aunt. 

The trip was surprisingly fast and surprisingly cheap. Just two Singapore dollars and I managed to get to the main station in under half an hour, and just four or five stops in between as well. That is not to mention the fact that the seats were extremely comfortable, and the ride was smoother than silk covered in butter. The only problem I had with the bus system was probably the great distances between stops, which also meant that missing a stop would be another long wait for you before you actually get to wherever you want to go. Also, it stops at strange places, always a few hundred meters away from the landmarks - like the train station, which required me to cross about six or seven narrow roads and two main streets, which was followed by an overhead bridge and later an underground pass. But anyway, there is also the problem of returning home - which caused me to be a little lost when I was heading back. More details on that later.

I remember coming to the Taipei Central train station last year when I had my mini adventure like this one, or was it at the beginning of this year? But I had way more clues back then, and perhaps a firmer grasp at things because I was careful. This time around, I couldn't care less about planning and couldn't care more about just ramming my way through the unknowns. I didn't feel like asking for directions, though I had the urge to do so with every passing pedestrian. Not to mention the fact that the central station is like a giant maze that reaches deep into the foundations of the city. The station alone is bigger than Takashimaya, and it has like five or six underground sub stations. That is because this station has two main MRT lines crossing each other, not to mention the existence of three or four railroad trains and a highspeed train station. The result of fitting all of those land transports into one building is a building filled with colorful signs, confusing words, a lot of escalators and even more confused people. But still, I managed to figure out where to go and actually managed to make my way down to the platform just in time for the train to arrive. Oh, on a side note: A woman hung herself in the female toilet just yesterday, something which I failed to realize until I got home a few hours later. Eerie. 

I have emphasized it last year, but I suppose it is always a good thing to stress on something good every once in a while. The people here are very organized in the stations, leaning onto the right side when they are going up escalators, and not to mention actually queueing up just to get into the trains. People going in would be to the left, while the people heading out would be on the right. No shoving, no pushing, no old ladies with grocery bags trying to force their way through. Everything is performed in an orderly fashion no matter how many people are on the platform, and it is actually possible for you to run up the left side of the escalator steps if you are in a hurry, because it is considered as being a habit and the normal thing to do to lean on the right hand side. It's sort of like the rule in driving, about how you should keep to the road shoulders if you are driving at high speed, something like that. This is perhaps something I am really proud of, because it is one of those things that give a good impression of the country and the people, such things really bring out the best of a culture, I suppose. Valerie would testify to that, especially how the old man was so willing to give her his place just so that she could sit with her boyfriend the other time she was here. How amazing is that.

It wasn't difficult to find my way around this big strange city this time around, there was an air of familiarity at last, unlike the very last time. I knew where the places were, what to do there, where to go if I needed something, and it was pretty easy for me to fit into the shoes as one of the millions of Taipei commuters daily. Of course, there was always that joyous sense of anonymity in the crowd, something which you can only enjoy secretly with yourself and not shared with anybody else, since sharing would imply a communication, which would also defeat the purpose of being anonymous in the very first place. By telling someone, you become "The Person Telling Something", and by asking for directions you become "The Person Asking for Directions". By being yourself in a big crowd, nobody really thinks about who you are and what you are, or even where you are going to. You don't have a name tagged to your face, a category for you to sit comfortably in in their minds. The anonymity with no judgments, I love to get lost in big cities. It just makes me feel renewed, almost reborn. I guess I need cities like that to recharge my batteries, to know that there is still a place on Earth I can run away to if I just keep driving North from Singapore. 

Part two of my interesting trip happened mostly with Jeannie and her amazing family. Her mother looks so young that she could have very well have been her older sister altogether. She sounded exactly like Jeannie on the phone, and the way her brother Kenny laughed was almost identical to her as well. Her uncle Mac was a cool guy, but then you shouldn't expect anything less from a guy with a name like that. His wife looked puny next to him because he's just a big guy, dressed in white today and a strange haircut to boot. Still, he was friendly most of the time - so friendly that it made himself feel like a whale to me, and I was the plankton. Anyway, I don't suppose I should talk about the second part of the trip until the pictures come in from Jeannie's camera. Anyway, let's skip that for now and go to the road home.

It was getting late, and everybody was tired. We've been walking for a long time, and they have been waking up at six in the morning every single day. I could tell Jeannie was worn out by the trip, tired beyond her usual self and I had a terrible night as well - damn you, chocolate cake! So I didn't really force her to go anywhere with me, just sort of floated around Ximending and went to wherever she wanted, however long she wanted. We were supposed to go to Danshui at night, but it was really getting late by the time they headed off to dinner. The tour guide suggested that I take a train to Danshui first, and they'd meet me there after their dinner - which sounded like a good idea at first but, I figured they'd probably reach Danshui at a little after nine in the evening judging from the traffic, and Danshui is - mind you - at the very end of the MRT line. It's sort of like traveling from Lavender to Boon Lay, but with much longer distances between the stops - something like that. So halfway through the trip to Danshui on the train, I decided that it'd be better for them to head back to the hotel while I head on home myself. So I dropped at one of the stations, made a U-turn, went back to the grand central station and walked all the way back to the bus stop opposite the one I dropped only to find...

...that there wasn't a bus stop on the other side of the road. At least none of the buses actually had Linkou - where I live - written on the boards, which was confusing to me because in the returning buses are usually on the opposite side of the road in Singapore. Then again, I am not in Singapore right now, and made the mistake of assuming that things like that are universal around the world. So, I was lost - really lost. I didn't know where to go, how to go back, what bus to take, and the nearest vehicle to me then was a row of scooters and a rubbish truck. My Dad was at a business gathering with his clients, which also mean that he couldn't come to pick me up in town unless I was willing to wait out in the blistering cold with my book and iPod - which was running dangerously low on battery. I had to find a way, I needed to find a way. So I waved my hands into the darkened sky for an answer from above. Then, something happened, and I wasn't lost anymore.

My hand waving worked, and a yellow cab stopped by the side of the road. I opened the door to tell the driver my address, only to realize that I didn't actually know my address. Give me a break, it's a new house and I don't drive in Taiwan. I knew, however, that the Linkou Chang Geng Hospital is just around the corner from my house, and that I live above a famous Starbucks in the region. The driver smiled, and I smiled back at him. He knew where to head to, and I knew that I was going home for sure. I explained to him about my situation, being confused by the side of the road and without a bus to go home. Then I told him about being a student who studies overseas, and how Singapore doesn't have such a strange system. Somehow, our conversation moved on from traffic to studies, from the weather to politics. That was the interesting part, and I was pleasantly surprised at how much I could converse with him - in mandarin - regarding my political views of both Singapore and Taiwan. It was a great conversation, and I was glad that he supported my idea and that I supported his. I wouldn't have liked to have a guy throw me out into the streets just because we disagreed on the suitable presidential candidates. But anyway, it was a truly pleasant talk, and the $20 paid to him was worthwhile, definitely.

So, from being completely lost to completely found, then to completely lost all over again, it was a great experience indeed. I wouldn't have thought of a better way to end my holidays in Taiwan this year, and I am looking forward to Deuel's countdown party as well as the next year to come. When I got home this evening, my sister was still at home - eating leftovers and surfing the net with a bad attitude as usual. Sometimes you just feel like giving her a tight slap for no reason at all, since she gives everybody a bad attitude for no reason at all. She claims that buying another pair of shoes tomorrow would be a waste of money, which got me thinking about how efficient she has been spending her overseas holidays by staying at home for a full week now and playing the role of a walking dead. Either way, I know that I have spent a more fruitful and exciting holiday than she, and I thank those who made it possible for me today. That's Jeannie and her wonderful family, and the strangers in a strange city today. Thank you, and thank you.