FOURTEEN - DnB, Die Brucke and Van Morrison

~ FOURTEEN ~

Before I met the Aussie I seemed to be in a phase where I was collecting platonic male friends. I always preferred the company of men over women; I find them less intrusive on my privacy, less demanding of my time and attention. That's the self-centred Aries talking. When I first met Kornell he was wearing short pants, dress shoes and a crisp white shirt. He was covered in tattoos and had multiple facial piercings. He had just arrived from British Columbia and was staying with friends in Taipei.

Kornell could energize a room. His limbs were all rubber and liquid as he danced, lost in his own little world of beats and melodies. He could hear common rhythms and mix them together to create his own original compositions. Symphony merged with the theme from Definition. It was the music of a half generation younger than me, from different circles of influence and upbringing. I liked it, in small doses. I found if you listened too long, you ended up in a trance-like state. At the end of the summer Joel had an art show at his apartment and Kornell was asked to provide the soundtrack.

The Back Room' art show: see the work of Tim Joel

2003/8/2Diana Leeson, TAIPEI, Taiwan, Special to The China Post

The Van Morrison song 'The Back Room' refers to the laid back, voyeuristic lifestyle of the artist musician who takes inspiration from all that he observes.

Come to The Back Room art show on Saturday, August 2, at the home studio of Tim Nathan Joel, and see his work inspired by extensive travel, life experience, and nature.

Joel's artistic influences include Matisse, Picasso and the group of artists known as Die Brucke, but he admits that his work is "completely autobiographical". There is a story behind every painting, and this private art show is an opportunity for art lovers and artists alike to get the inside scoop on those bright, symbolic and sometimes shocking images.

Joel's Fujin street rooftop apartment in the Minsheng East Road district will be transformed on Saturday into The Back Room, a magical atmosphere where guests will groove to the background beats of DJ Phifty Phive from Kelowna, B.C., enjoy some light refreshments and soak in all of the energy that emanates from the powerful art in the room.

This ex-pat British artist has been captivated by Southeast Asia with her sun drenched beaches, lush jungles and beautiful native people. He found a peace that he had never known before when he discovered the island of Koh Samui in Thailand, a place that he now considers his "soul's home". He began writing poetry while staying on the island in 1992, and first started painting at Whitesands on Lamai Beach in 2000.

"My dream is to be able to do what I love, and to live on the money from that. It's pretty simple," Joel explains. He plans to return to Thailand and to open a gallery someday but in the near future he will continue to travel and promote his art both in Taiwan and abroad. Joel is also hoping to start an after-school art club for young artists while he is in Taipei.

Previous successful shows at the Citizen Cain and Saloon bars are making Joel somewhat of a household name in Taipei City. His art is gaining international attention as well. An upcoming North American tour will no doubt add a whole new perspective to the burgeoning career of this busy young artist. Serious art enthusiasts are welcome to attend this private party. For more information check out: www.joeljoel.com.

We sat on cushions on the floor and sipped Tiger beer from Singapore as Joel told us the story behind each painting. A row of perfect green apples floated in an illuminated fish tank, devoid of fish.

Kornell had a past shaded with some sort of emotional or chemical problems, but I didn’t ask - everyone I met in Taipei seemed to be there to escape something. The details weren’t important; there was solidarity in our escapism.

One night Kornell’s text woke me up. “You have to go out on the roof and look at the moon,” it read. He often called me in the middle of the night, a nocturnal creature who suffered from insomnia. After a few protests I obliged because he had my curiosity piqued. I flipped on the light and exposed a party of geckos on the ceiling directly over my head. So that’s what happens when the lights are out. I climbed up the stairs to the rooftop, still wondering what would happen if the suction on the lizards’ little green feet gave out and they fell down to land on my face during the night.

Then I saw the moon. It had two rings around it. One appeared to be purple, the other reddish orange. A haze much like the northern lights but more likely comprising smog and other gases streaked out from the moon like a sunburst. I immediately wondered what the same moon looked like on the other side of the world. But then, on the other side of the world, it was two in the afternoon. I turned my phone on silent and went back to bed, but I didn’t sleep. 

THIRTEEN - The Australian

Sometime in July I found myself with friends at another of those underground, all-night dance clubs where the air doesn’t move and you need to situate yourself next to the exit in case of an earthquake because they don’t pay any notice to capacity restrictions. The clearest thought in my mind was I may have missed the clubbing experience in my 20s but I’m too old for this.

When the smoke cleared and my eyes adjusted to the dark, there was The Aussie, doing some sort of hip-drop dance move that gave him an endearing wanna-be stripper quality. He was surrounded by foreign women, most of them in their early 20’s. I watched all the stereotypes play out for a few hours, as the live entertainment was far more interesting than anything else that was happening on the dance floor. On a trip to the bar, he recognized me and flashed that big granite-chin grin. This time when he asked me out I said yes. The cliché would be “a moth to a flame” but it always seems to me more like someone defeated and exhausted rolling downhill, taking the path of least resistance, losing control and gaining bruises as well as layer upon layer of dirt as they propel downward. By the time they hit bottom, they are no longer recognizable and their muffled cries can barely be heard through all the acquired coverings.

I think it was fall when I left my rooftop home at the bottom of the mountain and moved into the two-storey, three-bedroom apartment that The Aussie’s engineering firm had secured for him and his two roommates. The rationale was that it was too expensive for us to keep travelling back and forth from his apartment near City Hall to my garden home apartment on the outskirts of the city. I was informed by his roommates that it must be serious if he was actually moving ‘one of us’ in. The Aussie had been briefly married to a German flight attendant in the past – a technicality made necessary by a work contract in the Middle East, where common-law relationships among expats are not accepted in certain areas. Other than that, his relationships had been relatively short-lived. The last one before me was a Croatian lingerie model, also named Diana. I spent the first few nights out with his friends explaining that I was a different Diana. The Canadian one. He rarely mentioned to his friends that I had children at home.

Our days consisted of work, the gym, the British pub on the way home for dinner, and sometimes the beach on weekends. We fell into a very comfortable groove. I believe the flipside of that description is a rut. The Aussie drank heavily, however, and the truths blurted out at midnight took a toll on our relationship. By night we could see no way to merge our futures from opposite ends of the Earth. He would accuse me of having too many male friends. He suspected I was seeing someone at work. He followed me and my girlfriends down the street on a girls’ night out and wailed drunken pleas to be allowed to join us.

By day he took beta blockers to kickstart his heart into sobriety, and declared his undying devotion and commitment once again. He was adamant that the girls would join us in Australia on summer holidays, when this contract was through. He said he would spare no expense to bring them over but he could never move to Canada. My one-year-date to return home to Canada came and went, with little fanfare. My family back home became adjusted and accustomed to living without me, and life ticked onward.

We went on several memorable trips together. He came home with me at Christmas that first year. We went to Australia and travelled the entire Eastern coast together, top to bottom, over a few different vacations. We were not close or connected on these trips, however, and I remember thinking I was once again experiencing something that I would appreciate far more if my children were with me. I met his family and they were polite and patient with me but carefully and honestly expressed no hope for the future of our relationship, with my children in Canada. I couldn’t believe they were actually voicing their thoughts in that way, with me in the room. We went to Singapore for a friend’s wedding and Vietnam for kite surfing but never Thailand. We were booked there in 2005 but had a last-minute change of heart. More about that later.

One day The Aussie asked me to pick out an engagement ring. He sent me photos of platinum bands and diamonds to choose from. The next weekend we were at another British Pub and when one of the Asian girlfriends of his colleagues asked why he had brought ‘coal to Newcastle’, he said, in a very loud voice while smiling at me, that ‘Diana is just going through a phase in Asia. Getting stuff out of her system after a messy divorce. She will be going home soon. She has three kids back in Canada, you know.’

Some nights the tension in that one private room of our shared apartment was unbearable, the air cloying. He stood at the open window with his whiskey, blowing cigar smoke out into the night. I stood at the window gulping mouthfuls of air that could never be fresh enough. Not in that city. The first time I left him was when he renewed his contract in Taipei without telling me. I found out through our roommate. I waited until he was gone to work and packed an overnight bag with everything I might need for several weeks (I never unpacked my makeup bag so I was ready to go at a moment’s notice) and after checking out and rejecting the beer-stained couches and cigarette-stained walls of the local hostel, landed on the doorstep of a girlfriend. I did that a total of twelve times during our 2.5 year relationship.

One week we were travelling home to Canada so that I could have surgery to reverse a tubal ligation. We were getting married and starting a family and preparing a future for my daughters to join us part-time. The next week I was staying at a girlfriend’s apartment until he could sort out his thoughts without flipping and pulling the floor out from under me.

I was sitting on our balcony at 4 o’clock one morning, watching the sunrise and speaking to my daughters who had just returned home from school in Canada. I heard The Aussie walk in and slam the door behind him. He had been out all night – I had decided to come straight home after the gym instead of accompanying him to the pub. I was tired of being left sitting in the corner, eating my Thai beef salad and reading a book while he stood with his friends in front of the bar, watching footie on the TV and flirting with the Asian barmaid who, if tipped appropriately, might be persuaded to take you in the back room for a moment. I told him once that the group of them looked like a bunch of penguins waiting to be thrown a fish.

Annoyed with me for straying from the routine, he decided to go with the boys to the massage parlour after the pub and make a night of it. He interrupted my call home to tell me that he must have left his phone and his good watch there and would return after a few hours to pick them up. I just laughed. I mean, at times like that, when you realize what a ridiculous mess you have created of your life, you just have to laugh, right? My hilarity was not well-received. The Aussie grabbed the phone out of my hand, swiping my cheek with it before wrenching the window open with his other hand and whipping the unit out over the banana trees. I stood up and watched as it fell with a plop into the pond where the over-sized, auspicious goldfish swam. My first thought was concern for what my daughter must think, having her phone call interrupted this way. Then I reasoned with myself that she probably had no idea what was going on – we had been interrupted many times before by interference and we could continue our conversation later. I wondered what the goldfish thought of the new addition to the pond. I wondered how long The Aussie would be in the shower and if it would give me enough time to pack, retrieve my cell phone from the pond and find an all-night coffee shop to sit in and wait for the gym to open so I could shower and plan my next move. He gave me just enough time. 

TWELVE - In Taipei with Tyley

In a sea of Asian faces, a white one catches your attention. Imagine my surprise when, standing in line at the local 7/11 on my lunch hour a month ago, I spotted a familiar face from back home - Merrickville, that is.

The smiling visage of Tyley Ross, who spent his elementary school years in Merrickville, was on a brochure for the musical “The Wedding Banquet.” I picked up the ad and tried to read it, but it was all in Mandarin. After a brief consultation with some of my Chinese colleagues, I learned that the musical would open the following week, on the 8^th of August, in Taipei City.

Let’s just say getting an interview with the star was easier than getting tickets. English may be Taiwan’s second national language, but not a lot gets done in it.

I emailed the media contact and she forwarded my request for an interview to Tyley in Seattle, where rehearsals were finishing up. He accepted the invitation warmly, and was excited at the prospect of seeing a familiar face from home, as we all are while on the other side of the world.

Tyley Ross used to hang out with my best friend’s brother, way back when I was in junior high school.

It was definitely an ‘I knew you when...’ situation. I hadn’t seen him in over eighteen years (Yikes!) since he moved to the big city to attend Canterbury School for the Performing Arts.

Tyley has theatre in his voice and in his walk. His posture looks practiced and his hands are very expressive. A consummate professional, he tries to save his voice in the off-stage hours, adhering to a fairly restrictive diet avoiding alcohol and dairy products before performing. I had to give my head a shake more than once when he broke into that familiar smile of the boy I used to know. Many things have happened in the life and career of this local boy since the days when he used to stand on a table to be heard above the crowd. And some things haven’t. He still loves to break out in song on a whim, God bless him. We were sipping iced tea (his was peach, mine vanilla pudding flavour) in a funky little tea bar in the shopping district of Hsimenting when “I Don’t Want To Miss A Thing” by Aerosmith came over the speaker.

Suddenly Tyley gets that ‘are you ready for this?’ look in his eye, and starts belting out the song in his best Broadway voice. But subdued, like he was singing just for me. Imagine my bliss. This man can really sing. We spent about three hours catching up on life and gossip, and waxing poetic about the future.

At one point Tyley looked around (keep in mind, the man was severely jet lagged and under the influence of highly caffeinated green tea...) and said, “sometimes I just have to remind myself of where I am.” So we sat quietly for a moment, watched the young trendy Asian set jostling for elbow room on the shopping street behind us, and smiled.

On Sunday the 10^th, I persuaded three of my best mates in Taipei to accompany me to the opening weekend of the musical, which was doing very well at the box office. According to Tyley, the cast was a bit apprehensive as to how the show would be received, as it is of a slightly controversial subject matter. If you haven’t seen the movie, the story is about a gay male couple, a woman, and a baby. I don’t want to give all the surprises away.

I will, however, share my favorite scene. It is in the second act, in a gay bar. Tyley sings a powerful, energetic solo that reminds his fans that he was chosen by Pete Townsend himself to be the star of The Who’s “Tommy” when it was in Toronto. It is evident that he loves to perform, and his joy is contagious.

The Chinese media were very excited about the musical, based on the movie written by Taiwan native Ang Lee, and produced by Taiwan native (and Broadway star) Welly Yang. Tyley did numerous interviews and press conferences, both on television and radio in Taipei.

After a highly successful run in Taipei City, the musical headed for Ang Lee’s hometown of Tainan. Then it was scheduled to go to Singapore, where strict censors forced writers to change the ending of the show to something more ‘socially acceptable’.

Tyley will get to see a bit of Southeast Asia on this gig, and he is very happy about that. To be able to perform on the small stage, where he is still directly, “connected to the muse,” is what he hopes to continue doing, indefinitely. He has done some film work and some songwriting in the past, and may return to that some day, as he certainly possesses talent and presence in both areas. But his love is musical theatre, and it shows.

Thank you, Tyley, for giving me a sneak peek backstage into your life in the spotlight. May your voice be velvet, and your dance electric.

                                                            

Tyley Ross now performs in Aria Electronica.

 It’s fantastic stuff, and Tyley’s voice comes through loud and clear. He still travels the world, and was recently in China, but I try to catch his show whenever he comes back home.

ELEVEN - Mother of the Far Away Other

                                                 

Joel made the move to Taiwan when life as an artist on the beach in Thailand ceased to feed him. He had been away from England so long that it was no longer home to him. I was invited by a friend to Joel’s vernissage one night. It began at 11pm and was expected to wind up around 7, when everyone would go to breakfast. I was intrigued, but first I needed a nap.

Breaking up with The Norseman had been harder on my physical self than my brain was willing to admit. I had lost a lot of weight, and needed new clothes that fit. What to wear to an artist’s vernissage? Finally I settled on a silk halter top that my Chinese teacher had given me as a birthday gift. I paired it with second-skin, pocketless jeans and slave sandals, rolled my newly-straightened and blackened hair up in a bun and secured it with the chopsticks clip. From the back, I could pass as Asian. I was kind of mesmerized by the image in the mirror.

When we arrived at the café there was already a big lineup at the door. Most of the people were Western, and I took my place in line and listened to the variety of accents. South African was easy to distinguish with its Dutch influence. Australian, Kiwi…was that Bostonian? And Scottish. Then we were being ushered inside, to a completely white room with white sofas, black tables, black bar with matching stools, and mirrors everywhere. Gauguin-esque paintings of naked women embellished with tropical foliage were the only colour in the room. I was standing there marvelling at the effect when I felt a warm hand on the bare part of my back. A voice in my ear. “If I am the Sun, you must be the Moon.” Well that’s a new one.

Joel smiled and introduced himself. He kissed me on both cheeks and said, “Murray told me he was bringing his Canadian friend, Diana. Goddess of the Moon. Happy to meet you.” I wanted to shave the tiny little tuft of hair sprouting from his chin but other than that I loved his face, instantly. And I loved that he wore one green sneaker and one red. “I have another pair just like them at home,” he smiled as he walked away to put his hand on another bare back.

A few weeks later I had the great honour of sitting for a portrait by Joel. I was one of the only models he had ever painted with clothes on. It took all day, but gave me time to think as his brush traced the negligible curves of my body in my bikini top and sarong. We ate mangos and sat under the banana trees on his rooftop porch as the sun went down, after hours of work. He called the painting “Mother of the Far Away Other.” 

TEN - From South Africa to Australia

Ron decided he wanted to have a house party, and Ben grudgingly obliged. We bought booze and snack food and set to cleaning the place. I swept the rooftop patio and bought a few small potted plants and strung patio lanterns between the clothesline wires. The night of the party was warm and sticky. But unlike back home, there were no mosquitoes.

I piled my hair up on top of my head and secured it with a hair clip that looked like a pair of chopsticks. I pulled on a cotton tank top that had a bra built in and thin satin straps. I had lost another ten pounds and didn’t need to wear much in the way of foundation garments, which was a good thing because it was too darned hot. My skirt wrapped around me once, buttoned on the hip and hung straight and long to the floor. It was made of a very thin, diaphanous fabric. Cool. Breezy. Ben was in the kitchen fussing over some complicated appetizer and Ron was organizing the music so I offered to go and meet our guests at the subway station. I swished along through the dark alleys, past the hotel, through the night market and over the footbridge. The lights of the city reflected on the water. A musky odour hung in the air. Fish, weeds, garbage, heat.

This is the night I met Murray. The first thing I noticed about him – the first thing anyone notices about Murray – is his flashing eyes. Then his tilted smile, his hands, and the way he walks. I enjoyed his South African accent. We spent most of the night talking. He seemed genuinely interested in me and my life back home. He wanted to know more about my girls. He told me he was trying to get into acting. There were quite a few opportunities for Westerners to do TV commercials, series and even movies in Asia. We decided I would go along with him on some of the auditions, because they might need an older white chick. His words.

The next morning I came downstairs to find Ben sweeping the floor and picking up empty beer bottles. I picked up a mop to help him. My inquiry as to Ron’s whereabouts was answered when he suddenly appeared, coming out of the main floor bathroom. The one with the tub that we had used as a beer cooler the night before.

I peeked past him into the bathroom and, sure enough, he had taken his shower right over the beer. The tub was still half-full of bottles, now covered in suds and hair. My stomach flipped over.

“Diana,” Ron said, looking serious as he towel-dried his hair. “If you want to try my homemade yogurt, you should just say so. Because it’s not very nice to just eat it without asking me first.” (When you read this, you must hear “YOG-urt” because that is how he pronounced it.)

I tried not to make too much of a face as I promised I had not touched his homemade yogurt, which he kept on top of the fridge where the heat activated the bacteria. In fact, I told him, I didn’t have the slightest interest in trying his yogurt. I realized that now, in my mid-30s, I was learning the politics of dormitory living.

That same weekend I met Murray in Hsimenting and we went poster shopping together. He wanted the big movie posters for his rooftop apartment. Basically he lived in one tiny room, but showered and ate outside on the roof, under an awning. I couldn’t imagine living like that. In one way I would feel totally exposed, showering behind a half-wall to the open air. And on the other hand I would be claustrophobic in that tiny room with no windows. But Murray was in Asia to save money, and the rent was cheap. A lot of Westerners lived like that in Taiwan.

I didn’t spend a lot of time with Murray, but I loved him. He wasn’t, however, a love interest, or the reason why I stayed in Taiwan two years past its expiry date and my original plan. The Aussie would be the reason behind that.

I met him when Murray took me to Carnegies one night. The Aussie was the quiet one; his British friend was trying and failing to pick me up. He was laughing silently in the background, watching his friend make a fool of himself. We talked for a few hours as I waited for Murray to reappear from wherever he had vanished to. The more he drank, the pushier he got. He wasn’t making a good impression but I was having a difficult time extricating myself from the conversation, with my escort missing from the picture. Finally my South African friend showed up and I said my goodbyes, leaving The Aussie with my phone number. I changed one of the digits, however, because I didn’t have a good feeling about the whole thing.

The taxi ride home with Murray was a long, quiet one. He was protective of me, and he didn’t like The Aussie. Over the next 2.5 years, my relationship with the man from Melbourne would end more than one of my friendships.

I walked in the front door of my house just in time to see the feral cat disappearing back out the kitchen window. We decided to call him “YOG-urt.”

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 Special to the Advance

There Really Is No Place Like Home

August 2003

It has been said that ‘a man travels the world over in search of what he needs, and returns home to find it’. Well, the same goes for women. There really is no place like home.

During my six months in Taiwan, I have met people from England, Australia, Germany, South Africa, Canada and the United States as well as many from Southeast Asia.

It has been a wonderfully enlightening experience, learning about not only the Chinese culture but also the cultural differences between all of the foreigners that I meet from day to day.

Canadians are well received no matter where they go in the world, it seems, and this makes assimilation into a foreign culture much easier. The natives are willing to help and to teach and they actually seem grateful for our presence here in their country. We are treated with respect and consideration, and any cultural differences that may arise are always handled with the utmost tact and diplomacy.

There are, however, plenty of cultural differences; some good and some bad. For example, I like the way families are so close here, and the elderly are held in such high regard. In dealing with strangers, respect is paid until the person proves they don’t deserve it, not the other way around.

Some of the more difficult cultural differences include the jostling and butting in line at the subway, the cashier line and the bank teller. I guess it comes from having so many people in one place; they have learned that if they don’t seize the opportunity and move up, they may never get served.

I appreciate the Taiwanese ability to organize and coordinate large scale events. I spent the Canada Day weekend with a bunch of ex-pats at the Chin-Chin Ranch (no, they don’t raise pandas there, much to my disappointment). I actually felt my eyes well up with tears when I heard Stompin’ Tom Connors’ song ‘Bud the Spud’ coming out of the loudspeakers.  It was all Canadian music all night, and the burgers on the grill were just like Mom makes at home. Of course, the waist deep, bath temperature pool (Taiwanese don’t like to swim) and raw seafood were pure Taiwan, just in case you were momentarily unsure of your whereabouts. The door prizes were massive bottles of Crown Royal and Niagara Ice Wine, Ford Canada tee shirts and wristwatches (I’m the proud owner of one of those).

We ate our Canadian birthday cake with chopsticks.

MTV hosted a weekend rock festival on Fulong Beach recently, and I was impressed with the way the event went off without a hitch. When the music ended at 10pm, the lead singer said into the mic, “Hsieh, hsieh (thank you) – GO AWAY,” repeatedly. My group thought we might like to go for a swim at this lovely beach party, but entering the surf was strictly forbidden and moving up onto the grass and off the beach was strictly enforced at the end of the concert. A group of about 60 police officers formed a line and did a sweep of the beach, moving from the shore inwards, and everyone had to pack up their beach blanket and head for the tent village or the train back into the city.

A group of volunteers followed with sticks and garbage bags, and within an hour the beach was cleared so that you never would have guessed that several thousand people had been partying there on the sand just minutes earlier.

I kept thinking, imagine if they could clear the Corel Centre or Lansdowne Park just as quickly? It was quite an efficient, if slightly militaristic system.

I must confess, however, that my group of Canadians and one token Aussie were unable to go the whole night without indulging in a little wave hopping. It was thirty degrees in the dark, after all. Our tents were unbearable. We were all lying about in our swimsuits, miserable and grouchy.

At midnight, with several uniformed security guards running after us with flashlights, we took off for the water.

We discovered that they quickly stop chasing you if you doff your swimsuits and head into the water naked as the day you were born, under the light of the silvery moon, so to speak.

And just in case there was any doubt which country we bold tourists were from, one of our fellow skinny dippers had a bright red maple leaf tattoo on his behind.

I will be home for the last two weeks in August, and I look forward to hearing from friends and spending quality time with my family, whom I have missed as one might miss their right leg.

I will be heading for Tim Hortons before I even leave the airport at 8am Friday August 15, and stocking up on tins of English toffee cappuccino. My shopping list of things to bring back to Taiwan include: authentic Levis jeans built for Canadian figures, 100% cotton clothing (it’s all polyester here; try that in 45 humid degrees…); shoes that fit bigger than Asian feet; and all the bathroom supplies and vitamins that cost up to 75% more here on La Isla Formosa.

My itinerary of vacation activities includes soaking up the affection of family and friends first of all, who become even more precious as the miles and months separate us. I look forward to lying in the sun on the St. Lawrence on Dad’s boat, camping out with my daughters, seeing the stars in the clear Ottawa Valley night sky and eating my mother’s home cooking.

I want to ride in a pickup truck and sing a country song…loudly. These are the things I miss most of all. And it’s only been six months!

Thinking about how much I miss Canada is making me choke up so I think I will sign out now, and look forward to seeing all of you when I’m in town, the last two weeks of August. Take care of yourselves, and take pride in being a true Canadian. We really do live in the best country in the world, you know.

-30-

NINE - The Poison Month

Special to the Kemptville Advance

July 2003

The fifth month of the lunar calendar is June, and it is known in Taiwan as “Poison Month”. This is because the arrival of summer and its characteristic humidity is highly conducive to the breeding of viruses, and the wandering of all manner of poisonous snakes, insects and other small creatures.

I personally ushered in the month with a nasty case of bed bug bites. No, it isn’t just a little jingle that your mother sings to you before bed. There are bed bugs, they do bite, and they itch like you wouldn’t believe until you get the proper medication.

I only had to suffer for three days, thank goodness. Taking medication is a bit scary here, as the doctors prescribe a cocktail of about four different pills to take orally, but there is no accompanying literature, instructions or warnings in English to let you know exactly what you are ingesting. I must admit, though, it always works, and fast.

June started off with a bang, with the Dragon Boat Festival. This is one of the biggest celebrations in Chinese culture, and it warrants a statutory holiday, which fell on Wednesday June 4 this year.

The story behind the holiday is quite disturbing and sad to some, but so are many of the European fairytales that we in North America have adapted for use in story telling to our own youngsters.

As the legend goes, a mad poet overcome with passionate suicidal urges threw himself into the river many, many years ago. When his daughter discovered what he had done, she threw herself in after her beloved father, in an attempt to save him.

Dragon boats were set upon the water to search for them, but it was too late. The poet and his daughter were found floating lifeless on the surface of the water, wrapped in each other’s arms. Townsfolk were afraid that hungry fish would dishonor the bodies by nibbling on them before they could be retrieved, and so they threw ‘tzongtze’ or rice dumplings wrapped in bamboo leaves into the water.

Today, the love of family and the hope of good luck is celebrated by the giving and receiving of tzongtze on Dragon Boat Festival Day. Teams of twenty men (and some women) practice for weeks in advance of the day, in preparation for colourful and exciting dragon boat races. Unfortunately, as with most large public gatherings this year, most of the events in our area were canceled due to SARS.

At Kimberly, the students worked for hours on huge cardboard dragon boats that they later raced up and down the length of the gymnasium. The children had a great time, and the parents were happy that we had at least introduced the concept of the holiday to their children (minus the suicidal poet part).

The beginning of summer in Taiwan also marks the beginning of typhoon and earthquake season. So far I have not been successful with my typhoon dance, which would bring us a paid day off work. The storms have brought high winds and heavy rain, but they always head back out to sea or towards Japan before hitting us full on.

In the southern part of Taiwan, Kaohsiung had a tornado touch down and do some damage last week. We had some excitement of our own, in the form of two earthquakes measuring 6.4 on the Richter scale.

I was leading my class of three-year-olds in a lively rendition of “5 Fat Sausages Sizzling In A Pan” (an action song) so I missed the first quake. We were happily hopping and sizzling when suddenly my Chinese teacher Penny started grabbing children and shoving them under tables. Thankfully it didn’t last very long.

The next day, I was sitting at my desk in the staff room, across from Greg, the hip-hop aficionado from Los Angeles. He was listening to music online with earphones, and I assumed the jiggling was his leg against the desk. Then Amparo  - a Spanish girl from Toronto - walked in and said, “Hey. Who’s moving the floor?”

That line is a classic that she won’t live down. The second quake went on for about thirty seconds, just long enough to get everyone terrified and panicking. You would think that they would be accustomed to this sort of thing in Taiwan, but apparently the frequency of these occurrences has just made the natives more nervous.

After the quake we all got on our cell phones and called our friends to compare experiences. My friend Kornel who has just arrived from Kelowna B.C. was still flying high on adrenalin when I got him on the line.

“Wow! (expletive) My apartment door flew open! The walls were moving and the patio door almost blew in! I saw it move!” He was quite pleased with the effect of the earthquake from his perspective on the eleventh floor of a luxury apartment building set in the mountains.

Every day for the last two weeks has begun with sunshine and temperatures nearing the 30 degree mark. At 8 in the morning! By noon it begins to get dark, and at the end of the school day the sky is dark as night and the rain comes down in torrents.

It doesn’t rain ‘cats and dogs’ here; it’s more like elephants and hippos. We have officially entered the season of natural disasters and all kinds of horrific weather on our little island in the Pacific Ocean. Of course, we keep hearing the line “you ain’t seen nothing yet folks” (or something like that) and so we wait with anticipation.

And never leave home without an umbrella.

-30-

 I only remember one truly impressive typhoon from my time in Taipei. For up to 48 hours leading up to the typhoon, the sky clears as if all the pollution and clouds have been sucked from it by the churning cyclone that is approaching. A blue sky instead of the usual cloudy orange smog is not always a welcome sight, but an ominous one. “My typhoon” began like a typical electrical storm, but the thunder booms were far louder and more deafening than they are in North America, possibly because they ring out over the open sea in Taiwan instead of over land-locked Canadian Shield. As the typhoon approaches, it releases a primordial howl that sounds almost human. Shop owners pull the metal accordion doors down over glass storefronts and secure them with a lock to the pavement. The grocery stores are packed with women hurrying to gather enough food for a few days as you never know how long the typhoon – or damage from it – will keep you inside. This is a marked departure from their usual habit of shopping for one day at a time; a habit I had not yet learned. Grocery stores don’t typically have parking lots in Taipei. Anyone with a car just double parks with blinkers on, blocking a lane of traffic until the shopper returns, with a glamorous extra bag or two of groceries. The typical culture is to shop fresh on your way home from work, or to venture out early on a weekend morning. Accustomed to shopping for a week or more, I often found myself at the cash, staring at a bewildered clerk as she attempted to smash all of my purchases into the rarely used paper bags at her counter. The shoppers behind me in line, instead of being annoyed with the wait as they would back home, hovered close and peered into my overloaded shopping cart, fascinated with what the white girl was buying. I hired a taxi to bring me and my purchases home, once a week. I was ready for that damn storm. I had water, a gas stove, noodles, soup. Bring it on. According to the Internet, there were seven typhoons during the time I was in Taiwan. Typhoon Soudelor is apparently what the storm was called in June 2003. It had 150kph winds when it hit Taipei, and heavy rain that the city and its weak sewers were totally unprepared for.

Darkness took over in the middle of the day, and then the rain came. Back home, I am excited by a summertime storm. All that pent-up heat and energy let out on the earth in a crackle of electricity and thunder just seems like a whole lot of fun. But in Taiwan, the typhoon storm has another source. It has been building up over the ocean, an incongruent tangle of a number of factors, and when it hits land with great force it inevitably tears up, smashes and flattens unsteady objects in its way. It isn’t a hurricane, or a tornado. In North America, we are sometimes hit by a tropical storm with over 100-kilometre-an-hour winds. As I write this, the deadliest typhoon recorded hit in 2013 in the Philippines, killing 6300 people. Typhoon Haiyan boasted wind speed of 315kph.

It isn’t safe to venture outside during a typhoon. I know this now. Animals take cover before the rain even starts; they know. They have been through it before. This was my first typhoon however. When I heard the howl and saw the palm trees bending outside my apartment window, the journalist in me grabbed my camera and ran to push the window open. 

I stuck my head out my apartment window to try to get a photo, just as a street-meat cart flew by, nearly severing my hand. It had been lifted six stories off the street and its metal shelving acted as a sail to propel it through the air. I stayed inside from then on, heeding the obvious warning.

The next day, women in high heels and pencil skirts picked their way through raw sewage and garbage at the bus stop. Children in sandals waded through knee-high sludge to get to the school bus. I was the only one wearing rubber boots that I had found in the broom closet of my apartment, and people were staring at me.

More memorable than a typhoon for me was the earthquake that managed to lift me a few inches off of my bed, in my sixth floor apartment. In a concrete, reinforced building. That was impressive, Mother Nature. But that will be enough, thank you. 

EIGHT - Marking 35 with a perm and a piercing

I turned 35 in April, after being in Taiwan for two months. I marked the occasion by having my hair professionally straightened, the way the Asian girls do. Asking my Chinese teacher Margo for direction, I found a well-priced stylist just two subway stops out of town, where the prices go down just as the mountains start to rise up around you.
I budgeted $100 CDN or $2500 TWD for my new hairdo, which was expected to last about six months. Basically it's a permanent but instead of introducing waves to the hair, they are ironing them out. I entered the busy hair salon early on a Saturday morning. All chatter and activity froze for a moment as the women turned to watch me take a seat. When the Mandarin sing-song once again filled the air, I heard "Laoshi" and "Janada" and knew I would be the main topic of discussion for the morning.
80% of the foreigners in Taiwan are from Canada. Most of them are from Vancouver. I haven't met another who had their hair straightened, in the local style. I was just ready for something different, I had always wanted long, straight hair and the humidity was doing something strange to my curls. I'm not sure what they thought of me for trying to look like them.
I was a bit alarmed when the stylist Margo had recommended whipped out a straight razor. She set about slicing the ends off my shoulder-length hair and I shivered, realizing I had sacrificed myself to her whims, unable to communicate in anything but body language and gestures. Oh well. I'm not a fussy person when it comes to my hair. And at the time, having just broken up with The Norseman, I felt the basic need to do something dramatic. I think it's therapeutic and maybe a bit symbolic or instinctual to want to cut your hair after ending a relationship. At least it seems to be, for me. Some of my most startling new looks have come about that way. I stared into the mirror and pictured myself with a short, choppy, angled do and after a few seconds of flirtation with the idea, decided against it. I wouldn't know how to communicate my wishes anyway. Margo had called ahead for me and told this lovely young woman what I wanted. Poker-straight hair that would stand up to the Taiwanese summer without a hint of frizz.
I sat with my hair in foil flatteners, read my book, texted my friend Sydney and waited for the style to set. The stylist showed me the box of Japanese straightening product, pointed at the clock and held up 4 fingers. I nodded, as Margo had warned me to clear my schedule for the afternoon. I was served a delicious sweet tea and rice cookies, and I think I even shut my eyes for a few minutes as I sat in the sunbeam at the front of the salon.
When the timer buzzed I was ushered to the sink where the pungent chemical was washed from my hair. Then I was put back in the chair, where I watched as the stylist blow dried and ironed the hair that had miraculously gone from near-Afro to shiny, straight, and - could it be? Heavy. I was reminded of when I wore a long dark towel on my head as a child and pretended I was Cher.
I gave her a hefty tip and headed to the subway to celebrate my new style with a new outfit. I couldn't find anything, of course, because Asian clothing is very rarely sized to fit even a slim woman from a Western culture. I decided to grab a Starbucks coffee and head to the bookstore instead.
After ordering my tall Americano, I checked my text messages. Sydney had replied. A quiet blonde also from Ontario, she too was turning 35 and wanted to mark it with something of significance. We made a date to meet at Carnegies, sort of a Taiwanese Hard Rock Cafe, for a late dinner that evening. I could feel my post break-up mood starting to lift as I mentally flipped through things in my closet, deciding what to wear.
Suddenly I realized my coffee was not appearing before me. I leaned over the counter and saw the three baristas huddled just out of sight. They were giggling and pointing at me.
I started to feel a little foolish. Were they laughing at my new Asian hairstyle?
"Coffee, please?" I chirped, uncertainly.
The girl who had taken my money materialized in front of me, on my side of the counter, smiling and holding up her camera. "You take picture with me, yes?" She nodded and grinned maniacally.
Okay...whatever. As long as it gets me my coffee...
As we posed and her friend took our photo, my new barista friend mumbled something in Mandarin with some English words thrown in.  "Striptease!" "G I Jane!"
For a short time in 2003 a photo of me and my barista hung in a Starbucks in Taipei. I suspect it had the incorrect caption assigned to it, noting Demi Moore's visit to their establishment.


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The next day, a Sunday, I hopped on the Mass Rapid Transit (MRT) or subway and rode it all the way to the trendy district of town, Hsimenting. Sydney met me at the station, having travelled from the opposite end of the city where she lived in a large, quiet apartment of her own. I thought it would be incredibly lonely not to have any roommates but she seemed to be enjoying it, having come from an extremely large family living in a tiny house in Nova Scotia.
"So? What's it gonna be?" I asked her. "Tattoo or piercing?" At dinner the previous night, after a few cocktails, we had both decided to get one of the light, Asian pieces that look more like pen-and-ink outlines than tattoos. In the sober light of day, I had decided against the idea. Sydney was still committed to something but she didn't know what.
Walking the gauntlet of tattoo and piercing parlours in Hsimen, we pointed at the pictures in the window and I tried to imagine them on conservative, subdued Sydney. Well, every quiet person has a wild side, they say. If Sydney wanted to fly the freak flag with a huge tramp stamp on her tailbone, to take a yet-to-be-discovered lover by surprise, so be it. But we were going to make sure the artist had experience, an impressive portfolio, and clean equipment.
An hour later, the adrenalin seemed to have settled somewhat in Sydney. "I think I'm going to get a belly piercing instead," she announced. I agreed that it was a good foray into the wild world of body art without getting too crazy. She chose the jewellery, leaned back on the bar stool and let the artist clean and pierce her flat white abdomen.
Then, like a graceful waterfall, she slid to the floor.
"I told her no look down!" the artist declared, before helping me to lift my friend to the waiting chaise lounge. I sat with her til she woke up and regained her wits.
The next day at work, Sydney couldn't bend at the waist or sit down. I wonder if she still has that piercing today.