a second (third?) new year's day
Happy New Year, folks. For the second time this week! 恭喜發財, get rich and all that.
The funny thing about living in a country where they have holidays that are not fixed to calendar dates and where you additionally have no friends or family to visit anyway, you have no idea what damn day it is. Of course, everyone knows Chinese New Year starts on a new moon about a month into the calendar year, and it's celebrated around Asia with different names and traditions, and notably in China it triggers the biggest human migration in the world. In Taiwan, much like in China, they shuffle around the holidays so everyone gets a week off to visit family. But i didn't realize when the break started on Thursday that that wasn't the official start of new year.
Nope, Thursday, when i deliberately didn't have a shower or do much cleaning - because that's the superstition, you see, you can't clean on new year's day otherwise you wash away all the good luck - turned out not to be the new year at all. Actually, it was my birthday as well, so i felt 雙喜 double happy that i got a day off work for my birthday, and it was new year's, and the first two episodes of Halo season 2 dropped, so i stayed in bed all day and soaked in all the good luck.
And then Friday i figured, well it's day after new year, so let's go pick up a bit of shopping so i can eat some more fresh fruit and veges before i head out to the festival on Sunday. I picked up some bits and bobs, came back home and settled in to spend an evening not worrying about anything. I unrolled my tent and unpacked all my camping shit to air it out. Had a long WhatsApp call with my dad. (More on that in a bit.) And then the fireworks started. And i'm like. Oh. Shit.
Then i looked up in wiki what was happening and apparently Thursday was "day before new year's eve", i.e. the day allocated for traveling back to your family. Friday was actual new year's eve, i.e. the day when you are supposed to clean the house and throw out all your bad luck of the previous year. And today - Saturday - is actual new year's day. So last night i quickly cleaned up all my tent shit, but i didn't have time to catch the garbage truck going by, and now the day that i thought was going to be 2 days after new year's and the perfect time to dump all my garbage before leaving on Sunday... i can almost guarantee that no garbage truck will be rolling the streets tonight.
I mean, i already fucked up my good luck this morning because i needed to do laundry so i'd have clean clothes, but a house full of garbage too?
In short, i am culturally illiterate, destined for a year of bad luck, and one year older too.
On the upside, i talked to my dad.
My plan of trying to keep in touch with family and friends a bit better in 2024 has been so far, so good. I did have to give up my personal boycott of American social media by venturing back onto Facebook to organize this party thing, and by keeping WhatsApp when i transferred my apps. Oh, yeah, i bought myself a new phone since the camera was all smashed up on the old one, and an LJ friend reminded me that i never buy anything nice for myself so i should just do it.
I mean, i spent less on my new phone than some folks spend filling up their SUV, but hey, to me that's a treat.
So, i reluctantly migrated WhatsApp and agreed to call my dad on it this weekend. But when i texted him to confirm my number, he was like "hey, wanna talk now?" And so we did! And it was great! Turns out his latest job for a company which had been pivoting into renewables got bought by an Australian extraction company and they trashed all the renewable energy programs, which resulted in a major culture shift where all the right-wing asshats who had been keeping their heads down and doing their jobs beforehand turned into open misogynists and spiteful workplace bullies. Because that's the kind of mindset these anti-woke crusaders apparently think is acceptable to bring to the office once they find out their new boss is One Of Them. Dad quit in despair and moved up to a beach house closer to his step-daughter and grandkid.
Of course his wife is still living 8 hours away in the city. They're having the usual "where should we retire" battle that i guess most old couples have sooner or later. I tell you what, i have never been happier to be single. They can't pay the mortgage on the beach house on her salary, so he found a new job out in the sticks - which he says will be his last - where he gets to be head of HR for another company in a rough'n'tough engineering sector, hopefully helping this one to maintain a diverse workforce with a professional and non-toxic culture.
He was happy to talk to me, because he got to rant about all his left-wing environmentalist stuff without someone rolling their eyes at him, and we got to talk about Dune and Star Trek and sci-fi, and reminisce about New Zealand 35 years ago, and complain about the populist scumbags who rode the anti-vax COVID rage train back into power, and ponder what's next for the world. It was a really nice chat, made even nicer by the fact i didn't have to feel like i was "wasting" some of my weekend talking to family, because i got a whole damn week off. He refloated the idea of me using up some of my "work from hometown" benefit in NZ. It's certainly a more appealing option than using up all my annual leave to go visit, and it's not like i have a "home" anywhere else in the world, so... maybe.
Or maybe we could meet in the middle, like Indonesia or something. Although i imagine both of us would want to blow our brains out being surrounded by a bunch of rowdy Aussie backpackers or obnoxiously wealthy "eco tourists" and travel influencer types. Maybe we could find a mud hut in the middle of nowhere and wear Hawaiian shirts and eat coconuts while awkwardly trying to communicate with the locals in a Dutch/Chinglish/te reo pidgin.
I'm a chip off the old block, you see, and i only remember that when i actually do spend time talking with my parents. Well, parent singular now.
Anywho, life continues for me. It is glorious to be on my third day off, with four more to go. I can't even tell you how much greater my life would be if i could do 4 day weeks or even 3 day weeks. Two days break is not enough to decompress. Work destroys me.
But i still need it for my visa, for now. My gold card application came back with a request for more documentation just before the new year, which seems to be a good sign, inasmuch as it wasn't an outright rejection. Perhaps my salary is just enough to score me that freedom after all. We'll see. Hopefully i didn't wash away all my good luck today.
In the mean time i figured out my transport down to the festival in Pingtung. I'll be arriving Sunday night because there wasn't anything available in the day time, so i'll have to set up in the dark. Fortunately it's sunny down on the southern end of Taiwan, which will be a nice change from the cold, damp misery of winter in Taipei. I figure even if the music at the party isn't entirely to my tastes, worst case scenario i get to camp out in the bush for a few days, eat a bunch of hippie food, lounge round in the sun and not worry about work. I am ready.
Size 9 - I Am Ready
The funny thing about living in a country where they have holidays that are not fixed to calendar dates and where you additionally have no friends or family to visit anyway, you have no idea what damn day it is. Of course, everyone knows Chinese New Year starts on a new moon about a month into the calendar year, and it's celebrated around Asia with different names and traditions, and notably in China it triggers the biggest human migration in the world. In Taiwan, much like in China, they shuffle around the holidays so everyone gets a week off to visit family. But i didn't realize when the break started on Thursday that that wasn't the official start of new year.
Nope, Thursday, when i deliberately didn't have a shower or do much cleaning - because that's the superstition, you see, you can't clean on new year's day otherwise you wash away all the good luck - turned out not to be the new year at all. Actually, it was my birthday as well, so i felt 雙喜 double happy that i got a day off work for my birthday, and it was new year's, and the first two episodes of Halo season 2 dropped, so i stayed in bed all day and soaked in all the good luck.
And then Friday i figured, well it's day after new year, so let's go pick up a bit of shopping so i can eat some more fresh fruit and veges before i head out to the festival on Sunday. I picked up some bits and bobs, came back home and settled in to spend an evening not worrying about anything. I unrolled my tent and unpacked all my camping shit to air it out. Had a long WhatsApp call with my dad. (More on that in a bit.) And then the fireworks started. And i'm like. Oh. Shit.
Then i looked up in wiki what was happening and apparently Thursday was "day before new year's eve", i.e. the day allocated for traveling back to your family. Friday was actual new year's eve, i.e. the day when you are supposed to clean the house and throw out all your bad luck of the previous year. And today - Saturday - is actual new year's day. So last night i quickly cleaned up all my tent shit, but i didn't have time to catch the garbage truck going by, and now the day that i thought was going to be 2 days after new year's and the perfect time to dump all my garbage before leaving on Sunday... i can almost guarantee that no garbage truck will be rolling the streets tonight.
I mean, i already fucked up my good luck this morning because i needed to do laundry so i'd have clean clothes, but a house full of garbage too?
In short, i am culturally illiterate, destined for a year of bad luck, and one year older too.
On the upside, i talked to my dad.
My plan of trying to keep in touch with family and friends a bit better in 2024 has been so far, so good. I did have to give up my personal boycott of American social media by venturing back onto Facebook to organize this party thing, and by keeping WhatsApp when i transferred my apps. Oh, yeah, i bought myself a new phone since the camera was all smashed up on the old one, and an LJ friend reminded me that i never buy anything nice for myself so i should just do it.
I mean, i spent less on my new phone than some folks spend filling up their SUV, but hey, to me that's a treat.
So, i reluctantly migrated WhatsApp and agreed to call my dad on it this weekend. But when i texted him to confirm my number, he was like "hey, wanna talk now?" And so we did! And it was great! Turns out his latest job for a company which had been pivoting into renewables got bought by an Australian extraction company and they trashed all the renewable energy programs, which resulted in a major culture shift where all the right-wing asshats who had been keeping their heads down and doing their jobs beforehand turned into open misogynists and spiteful workplace bullies. Because that's the kind of mindset these anti-woke crusaders apparently think is acceptable to bring to the office once they find out their new boss is One Of Them. Dad quit in despair and moved up to a beach house closer to his step-daughter and grandkid.
Of course his wife is still living 8 hours away in the city. They're having the usual "where should we retire" battle that i guess most old couples have sooner or later. I tell you what, i have never been happier to be single. They can't pay the mortgage on the beach house on her salary, so he found a new job out in the sticks - which he says will be his last - where he gets to be head of HR for another company in a rough'n'tough engineering sector, hopefully helping this one to maintain a diverse workforce with a professional and non-toxic culture.
He was happy to talk to me, because he got to rant about all his left-wing environmentalist stuff without someone rolling their eyes at him, and we got to talk about Dune and Star Trek and sci-fi, and reminisce about New Zealand 35 years ago, and complain about the populist scumbags who rode the anti-vax COVID rage train back into power, and ponder what's next for the world. It was a really nice chat, made even nicer by the fact i didn't have to feel like i was "wasting" some of my weekend talking to family, because i got a whole damn week off. He refloated the idea of me using up some of my "work from hometown" benefit in NZ. It's certainly a more appealing option than using up all my annual leave to go visit, and it's not like i have a "home" anywhere else in the world, so... maybe.
Or maybe we could meet in the middle, like Indonesia or something. Although i imagine both of us would want to blow our brains out being surrounded by a bunch of rowdy Aussie backpackers or obnoxiously wealthy "eco tourists" and travel influencer types. Maybe we could find a mud hut in the middle of nowhere and wear Hawaiian shirts and eat coconuts while awkwardly trying to communicate with the locals in a Dutch/Chinglish/te reo pidgin.
I'm a chip off the old block, you see, and i only remember that when i actually do spend time talking with my parents. Well, parent singular now.
Anywho, life continues for me. It is glorious to be on my third day off, with four more to go. I can't even tell you how much greater my life would be if i could do 4 day weeks or even 3 day weeks. Two days break is not enough to decompress. Work destroys me.
But i still need it for my visa, for now. My gold card application came back with a request for more documentation just before the new year, which seems to be a good sign, inasmuch as it wasn't an outright rejection. Perhaps my salary is just enough to score me that freedom after all. We'll see. Hopefully i didn't wash away all my good luck today.
In the mean time i figured out my transport down to the festival in Pingtung. I'll be arriving Sunday night because there wasn't anything available in the day time, so i'll have to set up in the dark. Fortunately it's sunny down on the southern end of Taiwan, which will be a nice change from the cold, damp misery of winter in Taipei. I figure even if the music at the party isn't entirely to my tastes, worst case scenario i get to camp out in the bush for a few days, eat a bunch of hippie food, lounge round in the sun and not worry about work. I am ready.
Click to viewSize 9 - I Am Ready