surviving the first seven days and the challenge ahead
Last week Sunday morning i headed out to the corner of town where my European colleagues are housed up while they are in Taipei. I met up with J from Slovakia, who was one of the first to arrive. He was unprepared for the heat, humidity and torrential downpour that ensued over the next couple hours, but we did have a nice coffee and - more importantly - he brought me a gift all the way from Europe: fresh bread from a local bakery! After we parted ways i hurried home, stopping in for a tiny 筒仔米糕 tube rice cake along the way to dry off a bit.
At home i unwrapped the bread, and enjoyed the chewy crust of a proper European bread, first dipping it in olive oil, then olive oil and dark soy sauce in my wonky east/west home fusion cuisine way. It was glorious.
The rest of the week has been utterly exhausting, as expected. There were a couple of planning meetings, a bunch of bird-of-feather get-togethers, a workshop where we dived deeper than i expected into heavy statistical analysis, a snap after work drinks by the river on the one evening where it wasn't pouring with rain, then last night i joined my manager and a couple of other team members heading out to a friendly local night market a bit off the tourist trail (and walking distance from my house) where we ate 豬血糕 pig blood cake, 潤餅 lumpia, 蚵仔煎 oyster omelette and 芋頭豆花 tofu pudding with taro.
It was fun to see my colleagues experience the mellow flavors of some of our most foreigner-friendly dishes for the first time, then excitedly pull out their cameras to take photos of the residents throwing their trash. (Garbage trucks that play icecream van music every night to remind people to come out and throw their trash is always a novelty for people who live in places where trash is left out on the streets for once-a-week pickup. Of course when you live here the lack of wheelie bins and public trash cans quickly becomes unremarkable.)
Also, we got rained on.
But tomorrow is when it really kicks off. That's when we head out to the off-site, which coincidentally is located in exactly the seaside town where the big boss lives. He's a surfer and one of the optional team-building things that was planned for this meetup was inviting the Europeans to catch some waves in his home surf.
I have not caught a wave since i was 13. But there was a short period of my youth when i caught many.
I was born in Europe, and as such never really learned to swim for real. Even Europeans who do swim outdoors usually stick to lakes or the Med during its most placid and pleasant days. When our family moved to New Zealand i got a rude awakening in serious outdoor swimming, in places with strong tides, deadly rip currents and epic breaks. I was a dweeb, a nerd, a pathetic "pom" who was mercilessly teased by every New Zealander who was stronger, tougher, more tanned and more confident in the water than i could ever dream of becoming. But i gave it my best shot, learning how to body surf, boogie board and not get dumped.
Until one day i did get dumped. Hard. I remember exactly the beach. It was Raglan, the small seaside town where my father now lives, and where i will visit him next year. Raglan has an awesome black sand beach with world-famous breaks. In certain conditions the waves can get very big, and that fateful day i got sucked under, swallowed a bunch of a seawater, touched the bottom and could not find my way back out. I thought i was going to die. But the human body floats so within a few seconds i popped back up, at which point i made a bee-line for the beach and never stepped foot in the ocean again.
I never even went swimming again.
Well, that's not entirely true, because i have had a few drunken escapades where i ended up in a pool, but fully clothed, so it doesn't really count. And then, in my 20s at some point, i remember talking to my ex M about this experience and she encouraged me to venture out into the ocean again, which i did, just long enough to face my fears. I submerged myself completely somewhere off the Gold Coast of Australia, did a bit of paddling out to a depth where i could not touch the bottom... and then came back ashore and called it a day. Fear conquered, check, never swimming again.
The other thing that happened since i was 13, of course, is i changed my sex. So, as a young boy, going swimming meant putting on big, colorful board shorts - same ones i anyway wore because surfer clothes were the coolest thing in the world back in the early 90s - and jumping in the water. The end. But now, as a woman, it's a whole nother thing. Aside from the fact that my body isn't shaped in the most feminine way, so it seems impossible to ever find any kind of swim suit that would fit, women's bodies are also objectified in ways that turn something as innocent as going swimming into a huge fucking pit of anxiety and stress. How much skin should i show? What is appropriate for my age and body shape? Is there a different modesty standard in this country versus that one? I stopped shaving my legs almost a decade ago because fuck traditional beauty standards, but it's a lot easier to say "fuck traditional beauty standards" when you wear pants every day. Do you have the guts to show your unshaved legs in the context of one of the most fetishized outfits in modern society? It's the 21st century, yet swimsuit editions are still a thing. I like to look at pretty girls too, but when you actually are the girl being ogled it kinda fucking sucks. The patriarchy is trash. Nobody should have to care this much about the clothes they put just to go swimming, you know? But this is the world we live in.
Next year i am going to see my dad in Raglan, home of the wave that washed me ashore for the rest of my life. Even if all i do over there is kayak, i'm still gonna need to have some kind of swimmable gear. So a few weeks ago i scoured Amazon US and ordered a modest bikini/crop top and a pair of men's board shorts, and i resolved i would use this work meetup as an opportunity to conquer two fears in one - the fear of getting back into the ocean again, and the fear of either being objectified as a woman or despised as a freak due to my unconventional shape and refusal to groom my body for the pleasure of men.
I signed up for the Sunday afternoon surf class.
And, perhaps, i might be saved by the typhoon. Because one of the tropical depressions that's been causing all the unpredictable rain of the past week has now been upgraded to a tropical storm, and as it sucks up warm water around the Philippines it looks to turn north and perhaps reach typhoon status next week. Heavy rain warnings are already in place all up the east coast, and there's a chance the beaches will be closed.
We'll see. Just getting to the point where i even signed up for the class is huge. And in front of my work colleagues too, people who i will have to see again every day for the next however many years i stay in this job.
Emotionally, it's a big step. I don't think i've really captured how big in this entry.
Whatever happens, the next week is going to continue sucking every single ounce of energy that i have. I am going to be shattered by next weekend. But i have to power through. I can do it. I quit smoking this year, quit drinking last year. Achieving these small personal goals outside of my work shit is important, because if i don't have them then my only accomplishments are work accomplishments and those are entirely unrewarding. (Case in point: i got another raise last week, and it's just as hollow as my last one. My lifestyle is so spartan i could take a 50% pay cut and still be comfortable, so a raise is nothing but numbers on a piece of paper. Sigh.)
Sorry, i wanted this entry to be more evocative, but it's flat, because i am wiped. 12 hours from now i will be on a bus to the east coast with all my colleagues. Let's fucking go.
At home i unwrapped the bread, and enjoyed the chewy crust of a proper European bread, first dipping it in olive oil, then olive oil and dark soy sauce in my wonky east/west home fusion cuisine way. It was glorious.
The rest of the week has been utterly exhausting, as expected. There were a couple of planning meetings, a bunch of bird-of-feather get-togethers, a workshop where we dived deeper than i expected into heavy statistical analysis, a snap after work drinks by the river on the one evening where it wasn't pouring with rain, then last night i joined my manager and a couple of other team members heading out to a friendly local night market a bit off the tourist trail (and walking distance from my house) where we ate 豬血糕 pig blood cake, 潤餅 lumpia, 蚵仔煎 oyster omelette and 芋頭豆花 tofu pudding with taro.
It was fun to see my colleagues experience the mellow flavors of some of our most foreigner-friendly dishes for the first time, then excitedly pull out their cameras to take photos of the residents throwing their trash. (Garbage trucks that play icecream van music every night to remind people to come out and throw their trash is always a novelty for people who live in places where trash is left out on the streets for once-a-week pickup. Of course when you live here the lack of wheelie bins and public trash cans quickly becomes unremarkable.)
Also, we got rained on.
But tomorrow is when it really kicks off. That's when we head out to the off-site, which coincidentally is located in exactly the seaside town where the big boss lives. He's a surfer and one of the optional team-building things that was planned for this meetup was inviting the Europeans to catch some waves in his home surf.
I have not caught a wave since i was 13. But there was a short period of my youth when i caught many.
I was born in Europe, and as such never really learned to swim for real. Even Europeans who do swim outdoors usually stick to lakes or the Med during its most placid and pleasant days. When our family moved to New Zealand i got a rude awakening in serious outdoor swimming, in places with strong tides, deadly rip currents and epic breaks. I was a dweeb, a nerd, a pathetic "pom" who was mercilessly teased by every New Zealander who was stronger, tougher, more tanned and more confident in the water than i could ever dream of becoming. But i gave it my best shot, learning how to body surf, boogie board and not get dumped.
Until one day i did get dumped. Hard. I remember exactly the beach. It was Raglan, the small seaside town where my father now lives, and where i will visit him next year. Raglan has an awesome black sand beach with world-famous breaks. In certain conditions the waves can get very big, and that fateful day i got sucked under, swallowed a bunch of a seawater, touched the bottom and could not find my way back out. I thought i was going to die. But the human body floats so within a few seconds i popped back up, at which point i made a bee-line for the beach and never stepped foot in the ocean again.
I never even went swimming again.
Well, that's not entirely true, because i have had a few drunken escapades where i ended up in a pool, but fully clothed, so it doesn't really count. And then, in my 20s at some point, i remember talking to my ex M about this experience and she encouraged me to venture out into the ocean again, which i did, just long enough to face my fears. I submerged myself completely somewhere off the Gold Coast of Australia, did a bit of paddling out to a depth where i could not touch the bottom... and then came back ashore and called it a day. Fear conquered, check, never swimming again.
The other thing that happened since i was 13, of course, is i changed my sex. So, as a young boy, going swimming meant putting on big, colorful board shorts - same ones i anyway wore because surfer clothes were the coolest thing in the world back in the early 90s - and jumping in the water. The end. But now, as a woman, it's a whole nother thing. Aside from the fact that my body isn't shaped in the most feminine way, so it seems impossible to ever find any kind of swim suit that would fit, women's bodies are also objectified in ways that turn something as innocent as going swimming into a huge fucking pit of anxiety and stress. How much skin should i show? What is appropriate for my age and body shape? Is there a different modesty standard in this country versus that one? I stopped shaving my legs almost a decade ago because fuck traditional beauty standards, but it's a lot easier to say "fuck traditional beauty standards" when you wear pants every day. Do you have the guts to show your unshaved legs in the context of one of the most fetishized outfits in modern society? It's the 21st century, yet swimsuit editions are still a thing. I like to look at pretty girls too, but when you actually are the girl being ogled it kinda fucking sucks. The patriarchy is trash. Nobody should have to care this much about the clothes they put just to go swimming, you know? But this is the world we live in.
Next year i am going to see my dad in Raglan, home of the wave that washed me ashore for the rest of my life. Even if all i do over there is kayak, i'm still gonna need to have some kind of swimmable gear. So a few weeks ago i scoured Amazon US and ordered a modest bikini/crop top and a pair of men's board shorts, and i resolved i would use this work meetup as an opportunity to conquer two fears in one - the fear of getting back into the ocean again, and the fear of either being objectified as a woman or despised as a freak due to my unconventional shape and refusal to groom my body for the pleasure of men.
I signed up for the Sunday afternoon surf class.
And, perhaps, i might be saved by the typhoon. Because one of the tropical depressions that's been causing all the unpredictable rain of the past week has now been upgraded to a tropical storm, and as it sucks up warm water around the Philippines it looks to turn north and perhaps reach typhoon status next week. Heavy rain warnings are already in place all up the east coast, and there's a chance the beaches will be closed.
We'll see. Just getting to the point where i even signed up for the class is huge. And in front of my work colleagues too, people who i will have to see again every day for the next however many years i stay in this job.
Emotionally, it's a big step. I don't think i've really captured how big in this entry.
Whatever happens, the next week is going to continue sucking every single ounce of energy that i have. I am going to be shattered by next weekend. But i have to power through. I can do it. I quit smoking this year, quit drinking last year. Achieving these small personal goals outside of my work shit is important, because if i don't have them then my only accomplishments are work accomplishments and those are entirely unrewarding. (Case in point: i got another raise last week, and it's just as hollow as my last one. My lifestyle is so spartan i could take a 50% pay cut and still be comfortable, so a raise is nothing but numbers on a piece of paper. Sigh.)
Sorry, i wanted this entry to be more evocative, but it's flat, because i am wiped. 12 hours from now i will be on a bus to the east coast with all my colleagues. Let's fucking go.