An update, from Taiwan
Man, things are strange here on Earth-Beta.
In all seriousness, the longer I spend in Taiwan, the less it seems like an "alien" place and the more it seems like I've just stepped crossways into some sort of Bizarro-universe. Everything is mostly the same - people still have the same basic drives, same basic needs, same basic items and technologies are available; it's still really hot and humid, and *green* everywhere life can grow, etc; but everything is sort of 30 degrees off from what I expect - people speak some of what I think of as "default" language, but mostly speak something else; there is some writing in "default" language but mostly in a script that I can only pick out a few characters from; everything tastes different than I think it will (bread is sweet; tea isn't sweet) and the terrain, while basically conforming to the same shapes and laws I remember, is also divergent (it's not limestone under me; it's marble - the clay is red, but not the same color red - I pass innumerable well-tended gardens and fields, but only some of the crops I recognize.)
Luckily, I still have internet connectivity to Earth-Alpha, and the natives here in the other dimension have been without exception kind, friendly, and patient with my addled-second-grader level of speech and comprehension. I highly recommend a visit to this other Universe, which exists just 13 hours by plane from our own. :-)
This is my 11th day here. I dropped Jac off at the airport this morning :-( in Taoyuan and caught the train to Taichung, where I spent most of the day sleeping and finally got up to get some dinner, check my email, and write this post. For the first time on the trip, I'm alone - Jac is headed back to the states, Robert & Lily are back in Hulian on the East coast, and I'm here. My "spider-sense" is still adjusting to being out in a place where there is almost zero violent crime, cabbies are trustworthy, and oh my God that stall sells steamed pig faces.
Everyone needs to come here. It is profoundly widening of your worldview, as you begin to realize that the vast majority of humans alive today and historically have lived just fine without many things we treat as so common as to be part of the background noise. It is also an excellent antidote to xenophobia, however, if you can make it over some of the initial bumps in the road (if you eat ham sandwiches, eating congealed rice and pig blood cakes in your soup isn't really that radically different; squat toilets are actually better than sitting toilets in many respects; etc) because you really see just how much every person comes from the same basic cloth.
It was a surprisingly moving experience to come out of my room at around 9am, in the home of friends of Lily with whom we were staying, and find the father of the household snoring loudly on the coach, wearing nothing but old shorts, while next to him the grandfather bounced the little baby on his knee and sang songs to her. In the background, an unwatched TV murmurs the news.
I look around and think "yeah, I know these people; they just looked a little different and talked English the last ten thousand times I visited their house." The night before, they had treated Robert & Lily & Jac & I to a BBQ at their house, which involved lots of people eating things cooked on grills, and swapping alcoholic beverages, and shooting baskets, and telling jokes, and once again I've been here before; it was just with a slightly different group of people and the food items were a little more familiar.
Watching young mothers talk to their toddlers and grandparents play with children, you again see the utterly transcendent-of-culture connections between folks. Even in a culture with a fundamentally different religious and historical basis, there are still surprising parallels (if you flip channels here, you find the Buddhist equivalents to ＥＷＴＮ）
Anyway, I know I'm rambling. I'll get a little more coherent when I edit and caption the large collection of photos and videos and othersuch that Jac and I have amassed, and that I will continue to add to. I'll be posting or emailing links to it so folks can vicariously relive all the things I thought worthy of capture.
In all seriousness, the longer I spend in Taiwan, the less it seems like an "alien" place and the more it seems like I've just stepped crossways into some sort of Bizarro-universe. Everything is mostly the same - people still have the same basic drives, same basic needs, same basic items and technologies are available; it's still really hot and humid, and *green* everywhere life can grow, etc; but everything is sort of 30 degrees off from what I expect - people speak some of what I think of as "default" language, but mostly speak something else; there is some writing in "default" language but mostly in a script that I can only pick out a few characters from; everything tastes different than I think it will (bread is sweet; tea isn't sweet) and the terrain, while basically conforming to the same shapes and laws I remember, is also divergent (it's not limestone under me; it's marble - the clay is red, but not the same color red - I pass innumerable well-tended gardens and fields, but only some of the crops I recognize.)
Luckily, I still have internet connectivity to Earth-Alpha, and the natives here in the other dimension have been without exception kind, friendly, and patient with my addled-second-grader level of speech and comprehension. I highly recommend a visit to this other Universe, which exists just 13 hours by plane from our own. :-)
This is my 11th day here. I dropped Jac off at the airport this morning :-( in Taoyuan and caught the train to Taichung, where I spent most of the day sleeping and finally got up to get some dinner, check my email, and write this post. For the first time on the trip, I'm alone - Jac is headed back to the states, Robert & Lily are back in Hulian on the East coast, and I'm here. My "spider-sense" is still adjusting to being out in a place where there is almost zero violent crime, cabbies are trustworthy, and oh my God that stall sells steamed pig faces.
Everyone needs to come here. It is profoundly widening of your worldview, as you begin to realize that the vast majority of humans alive today and historically have lived just fine without many things we treat as so common as to be part of the background noise. It is also an excellent antidote to xenophobia, however, if you can make it over some of the initial bumps in the road (if you eat ham sandwiches, eating congealed rice and pig blood cakes in your soup isn't really that radically different; squat toilets are actually better than sitting toilets in many respects; etc) because you really see just how much every person comes from the same basic cloth.
It was a surprisingly moving experience to come out of my room at around 9am, in the home of friends of Lily with whom we were staying, and find the father of the household snoring loudly on the coach, wearing nothing but old shorts, while next to him the grandfather bounced the little baby on his knee and sang songs to her. In the background, an unwatched TV murmurs the news.
I look around and think "yeah, I know these people; they just looked a little different and talked English the last ten thousand times I visited their house." The night before, they had treated Robert & Lily & Jac & I to a BBQ at their house, which involved lots of people eating things cooked on grills, and swapping alcoholic beverages, and shooting baskets, and telling jokes, and once again I've been here before; it was just with a slightly different group of people and the food items were a little more familiar.
Watching young mothers talk to their toddlers and grandparents play with children, you again see the utterly transcendent-of-culture connections between folks. Even in a culture with a fundamentally different religious and historical basis, there are still surprising parallels (if you flip channels here, you find the Buddhist equivalents to ＥＷＴＮ）
Anyway, I know I'm rambling. I'll get a little more coherent when I edit and caption the large collection of photos and videos and othersuch that Jac and I have amassed, and that I will continue to add to. I'll be posting or emailing links to it so folks can vicariously relive all the things I thought worthy of capture.