In Continuum.

Strictly speaking, I have lost all contact between myself and any friends or acquaintances that I have met before high school. A couple of them are still on my MSN contact list, but they exist strictly in the form of a blue box that pops up in the bottom right hand corner of the screen every once in a while. It is as if we keep each other on our contact lists for the sake of doing so without the intentions of catching up with each other at all. It may be the fault of mine - it probably is anyway - for not trying to do so, but then I guess we have grown too old and too far apart for any catching up before we eat a mouthful of dirt. However, the friends that I have made since my childhood days in Taiwan are still, surprisingly, on my MSN contact list, and it is quite a wonder how I still talk to them every once in a while despite the obvious language barrier. That is not to say that they do not understand a word of english, and I a word of mandarin. You know how it is with languages, it is always easier to listen and understand rather than typing them out, and neither side was very good at doing so anyway. That was until I found out how to communicate in Chinese with my iMac, and I decided to give a pure-chinese conversation a shot last night. 

It was three in the morning when my childhood friend Sarah came online. That isn't really her real name of course, but then that was her english name while we were young because it just seemed kind of cool to have one back then for one reason or the other. She was the big sister of the pack, always the one with the ideas and the commanding one. She was also the oldest of the group, and I've always looked up to her in a way as a little brother, since my old elder sister never gave too much thought for me in the past anyway. So, we've been talking every once in a while over the past few years, and I remember helping her out with her english because she wanted to apply for a job as an air stewardess. It's not like the air stewardess working for any Taiwanese airlines are very good at their english anyway, but it is a requirement for all of them to be able to speak the language, or at least read from a template at a reasonable speed and fluency. I wrote this self-introduction letter for her in which she sent me in Chinese, and then I had to coach her about some grammatical things that she obviously forgot since she stopped learning the language a long time ago. But she picked things up really fast, and she was always eager to learn more things - her enthusiasm since her childhood days never dwindled, apparently. 

There was a problem, however, with her applications. She's a centimeter or two too short, and she is a little too old to be applying for the job as an air stewardess. She's always wanted to be one, though, and hasn't given up hopes even now. I don't suppose she is ever going to get the job, but it's not like I have told her about this either. It's just the whole issue with age, and how nobody is going to get any younger anyway. Her fighting spirit and enthusiasm has always been what drove me to respect this girl, even as a child. So she's been trying for that job for the longest time, and never for once has she been recruited before. More than it is a difficult job, the application is even tougher, with hundreds of applicants applying for the interviews at any one time, the chances of anybody getting the job is really little to none, not to mention the fact that she doesn't actually fit the bill either. So she has settled for a job as a sales specialist at Quantas, at least it is still a job remotely related to the airline industry anyway. It's not difficult to know such people in our society anyway, the kind that gave up their dreams just to settle in for a job that pays, a job that gives you the food that you eat. For every success stories out there, there are probably a thousand more dreams that went down the gutter, and my friend is just one of the many whose dreams as an air stewardess failed to take off from the runway. 

Life at Turtle Hills hasn't been easy for her, and the memories that she has gathered over the past six months have been anything but cheerful ones. The job doesn't pay well, the boss is from hell, and the long extra hours are not giving her time to breathe either. She feels robbed, she said, as we talked over the internet for the first time in a long time at three in the morning, and there was a sudden urge for me to fly back to Taiwan to check her out. It was a foolish thought, and the fact that I have school right now is probably going to make that thought impossible. Still, I would have if I haven't got anything to do right now - and no, my sister is probably not going to do anything about it despite the fact that she is in Taiwan. Six months at the same workplace and she is already feeling dejected and worthless, not so much because of the mundane nature of the job, but how her superiors do not appreciate her efforts and her attitude towards the job. I don't suppose I am in any position to judge whether or not she really failed to meet standards, or if he attitude was really not in accordance to the company's culture. Still, I don't suppose "being too happy" is a valid reason to blame someone for a rotten work attitude, when it really is anything but. 

I've never known her to be the kind of person to settle down for the ordinary, as she was always the cheerful, happy-go-lucky one of the group. Sarah was the leader when the other five kids attempted to build a wooden house in the middle of a field, or when we decided to ride our bicycles out into the fields to break into new frontiers as we called it. She was always there, the kind of person you'd see in school actively participating in school events, always the one motivating others because that is what makes her feel alive - that is what makes her so unique and special. To accuse someone like that, to cut out a person's character and say that that is a flaw that you cannot tolerate, is like a death sentence somehow. I mean, that is the way that she is, and she has been that way for so many years ever since we've got to know each other. We've been hanging out since I was four years old, although I cannot say that we have grew up together in any way. It's just sad to see that the once innocent and lively person that I knew is now a sad and depressed sales specialist, who feels worthless and useless in the eyes of the company and her superiors. And there I was, a few months ago after our last conversation, thinking that nothing in this world was going to put her down - ever. 

"This place is really foggy, isn't it?" she said, and I wasn't sure if she meant it literally. I do remember those cold winter mornings in Taiwan when I was younger, when the hill on the other side of the highway used to be covered in a thick layer of fog that covered the crests of the trees like Christmas tree decorations. She must have seen it in a different light though, she must have saw the fog like Halloween decorations instead, with monsters and giant spiders lurking in the woods, all of them with faces of her superiors baring their fangs and their claws. It must be hard living there alone, and the fact that it is in the middle of nowhere isn't helping either. I grew up there for a period of time, I know just how secluded that place can be. Aside from a few convenience store and a few temples, that place was pretty much filled with other industrial parks like the one she is working in now. It is a cheerless place, not somewhere you'd want to live fresh out of university and in the middle of your twenties. It is a place for roughed businessmen and old retired people - not her, not my friend, not Sarah. 

So we go through school and we grumble about backstabbing classmates and taxing assignments, then we bitch about unreasonable sergeants and ridiculous officers from the army. Yet, it is a completely different gameplay once you are slapped with the label of being an "adult", and you are forced to be a part of the workforce. Like a long line of laborers working in front of a conveyor belt with mechanical parts being put together and then sent down the belt to the next employee. The image is almost like some communist country back in the fifties, or some totalitarian country that wants nothing but the lives of its own people taken away for the benefit of the country as a whole. I cannot imagine my own friend in a situation like that, although a sales specialist is a whole lot better than working at an assembly line. It is close enough anyway, and all she needs now is to have the courage to leave the job. I think she deserves better than this, whatever "this" is anyway. She needs the courage to know that a person's self-worth is not dependent on what others say, but rather in the things that he does. She has done too much in life to deserve a dead end job that is making her life completely miserable. 

More than just being a friend on this side of the world giving her courage to let go of a life, I guess I was trying to give myself to same kind of courage when it is my chance to make the choice. It is not easy to just quit, to pack up your things in a box and leave like that. You have to think about the next job, or the next meal, or even the money for the bus ride home. It only takes two syllables to quit a job, but then it takes much more to get your life back on track afterwards. Most people are stuck in a job that they hate for the exact same reasons, for the fear of having a worse life than now. Still, there is always a choice in everything. Do you stay after normal working hours even though you don't have extra pay, or do you dust yourself off and leave at that time of the day despite everybody else trying to kiss the ass of the boss by staying late. Do you silently sit in front of the same desk for the rest of your life in a job that you hate with a passion or do you know when to pick up your things and start anew. I was watching an interview with a man who used to lived in Hawaii, and he was telling the interview what happened one day when he returned from work. His house was burned down because of a circuitry problem, and everything inside that house was gone. All he had was the wallet, the car that he was driving, the clothes that he was wearing, and nothing else. The life he knew was gone and turned into ashes. Still, he told the interviewer, he never felt more alive and free in his life than that one night he spent sleeping on the streets.