It's been five years
Five years since I've been back to Taiwan and while it feels familiar, it's also a world away from how I live my life. I think it would be very fun if I came with some of my friends and we spent the day shopping and eating etc. At the same time, I'm so tired all the time that I feel like a total granny, wanting to go to sleep at 8pm.
I don't have any interest in clothes or shoes. Since I've arrived, I have mysteriously lost my appetite and eat tiny portions compared to what I normally eat. The thing I most looked forward to coming back to Taiwan was the food but now I can barely stand to look at it. I've only just stopped feeling bloated. Maybe it's because my mum has gained 18kg in three months and so I'm super conscious about not wanting to do the same. The food is good, it's just that while normally I would have allowed myself that last piece, now I decide to leave it alone. Going to the market with mum is kind of boring too because she's a vegetarian.
At least my granddad said that I had become pretty. He then promptly followed that up with "you used to be chubby". My uncle-in-law, who is either totally oblivious to his own rudeness or simply a bit of a jerk not only said that I looked old (ok, he said that I looked much older than my cousin, who is actually 2 yrs older than me), he also said "you must have a big appetite." He then turned to the aforementioned cousin, who hasn't been able to find a job for over a year, and asked "So...still unemployed?"
I've never liked this uncle. He used to treat me and my siblings like total idiots because he thought he couldn't speak any Mandarin.
Anyway. I had to suffer through about 20mins of looking at baby photos and thinking of ways to extract myself since it seemed that my cousin's Facebook feed would never end. We went on a car trip today to go to the mountain but since it's still Chinese New Year, there were too many people visiting the mountain that the police turned everyone around. We ended up going to Carrefour. Yesterday mum and I went to the Eslite complex to watch a film just so we could escape the apartment.
I know that I'm being antisocial, hiding in the bedroom while everyone is in the living room. My aunt and cousins just came back from some Ice Sculpture exhibition thing (which they invited me to but ... hell no) and are making it seem like the most exciting thing to have ever happened. They seem to be able to make a huge deal out of everything. For example, someone bought new slippers for granddad but the soles were a bit uneven and he found it difficult to walk in -- this turned into a twenty minute discussion about exactly how they were improperly made, what could be done, who was going to fix them, whether or not the repair would work, and so on. I felt like blowing my brains out.
My siblings and I have never been very social people in begin with. We were the kids who had to be dragged out to greet people and then scampered away to hide in our bedrooms. Therefore this kind of supersocial situation is just awkward for me. Our family owns all three apartments on this floor, and the apartments are connected by this front foyer section. The front doors tend to be left open and everyone congregates in granddad's apartment (actually my dad's), since it's the biggest. The other two house my cousins and their wives (and baby), but my aunt (and two cousins) are also visiting. I'm kind of surprised that my uncle (dad's older brother)'s family hasn't come.
I'm so tired. I'm also still waiting for my Red Packet. Mum said that she'll just transfer it into my bank account. Thank God none of my nieces and nephews are old enough to start asking for Red Packets.