What do a young ex-British army captain, Cathay Pacific pilot and his two sons, honeymooning Londoners, a beautiful, bronze Spanish foursome, an Adidas regional salesman, and a twenty-six year-old, Serbian, Italian-raised cardiologist have in common with Nick and I?

Give up?

Surf Camp!

This motley crew was to be seen lazing about in hammocks, enjoying the morning’s banana pancakes, and trying our best not to drown at Padang Padang Surf Camp in Bali.

Staying at surf camp is a bit different from other vacations. It’s social, inclusive, and great fun. You won’t find big, fancy rooms, endless beach umbrellas, cheesy resort shows, or even TVs (or alarm clocks!) in your room.

You will find a comfortable, beautiful, relaxing compound, an close-knit community, and overwhelmingly kind and interesting people. The experience is wholesome, healthy, and, truly relaxing.

Our “schedule” at surf camp went something like this:

5-6 am (one day 4am!): Meet in the dining area for morning surf session, load up the boards, drive to the site
6:30-8:30ish: Surf as the sun comes up
8:30-9:30ish: come back, have breakfast together, prepared by the surf camp
9:30-1pmish: Lounge about the hammocks, sleeping mats, read, nap, sunbathe, swim
1pm ish: eat delicious, homemade lunch together, prepared by the surf camp
12-4 pm: leave for second surf session
4:30-6:30ish: Surf
7ish: camp owner drives to a restaurant, eat dinner together if you want to come
9-10ish: Hang out/go to sleep–there’s another early morning tomorrow!

You didn’t have to do any of this stuff.  For example, it’s ok if you just wanted to surf in the morning or afternoon or go on your own for dinner or stay in your room all day.  It was just chill, relaxed, and full of nice, beautiful people.  What an awesome vacation!

Plus, it’s one of the only vacations where you actually loose weight/get fit/tone up.  You surf hours a day, which is HARD WORK fighting the waves and paddling everywhere, eat small portions of homemade, healthy food, go to bed early, wake up early, walk a lot.  Candlelit seafood on the beach at night, sipping from coconuts–ya know, your typical paradise.

The only bad thing is that we stayed for far too short of a time.  Six days just wasn’t long enough!
Taiwan has never felt so crappy!

Next time, next year (hopefully!) longer and stronger.

I don’t want to let this get to long, so I’ll just leave you with some picture links.
Hope you enjoy, and as the Balinese say, Terima Kasih!

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Pictures (all links open in a new window):

The Surf Camp, Padang Padang, and Other Beaches

This is where we basically spent most of our time–our camp, our room, where we hung out/ate, etc.  Also the walk from our warung to Padang Padang beach, where we usually surfed.  Also general vacation pictures.

Uluwatu Monkey Temple

This cool temple is full of cheeky monkeys, ready to steal your stuff.  One large male monkey actually ran up behind me, jumped on my shoulders, and ripped my elastic ponytail band out of my hair.  Ouch! Oh monkeys!

Kecak Fire Dance at Monkey Temple

A very cool dance interpretation (involving fire!) of a story from the Ramayana.   The pictures look a bit mental, but start from the beginning and you’ll get the whole story from beginning to end in the captions.

——————-

ALSO:

Thanks to everyone for toe concern!  Once we got to Bali, I un-bandaged that thing and dove right in–it has healed nicely!  In retrospect, getting it ripped off was the right decision.  Even if you read my story and were frightened about your own upcoming fun-filled terror fest, just remember that it really does help it heal quickly!  And it doesn’t hurt afterwards for very long!

Now that mutant toething is gone, now I just have to worry about these gashes on my feet from surfing the reefs and rocks…

It’s a hard life, but someone’s gotta live it.

Dear God.

I’ve survived the most traumatic medical experience of my life.

I’m now down one toe.

And when I say, toe, I mean TOE toe. The big one.

Ok, ok. It’s just the toe nail.

Ok–it’s just half the toe nail, but still. Traumatic.

More traumatic than violently vomiting in a KFC bathroom with the stomach flu and drinking Smecta. More traumatic than getting that thing removed from my back. More traumatic than holding Nick’s hand as the doctor fisted his leg with a triple XL Q-tip full of iodine.

If you read my blog or keep up with my life (and really who doesn’t? ahm ahm), then you’ll know that after surfing two weeks ago, I developed a pretty nasty toe infection. This thing started like your normal ingrown toenail-type infection, swollen red area, a bit of puss, throbbing pain–this is what having a minor cut in Taiwan will do to you–it’s the water, it’s normal.

Anyway. I let two weeks go by. I don’t like going to the doctor (especially here) and every morning I woke up thinking it felt better, only to not walk properly on it and think it was getting even worse by the end of the day.

This goes on and on until I realize that we’re going to Bali next Saturday and I don’t want to be trying to surf with this absurd thing I’m calling a toe.

So here it is, Sunday evening and I decide that it’s finally time to go to the Doctor, which means the ER because nothing else is open. The good news is it’s, like, one minute away from our apartment. Woo hoo.

When we got to see the doctor, we sat down and he said it was severely infected and that antibiotics should take care of it. Then he called over another one who said they had to cut it off for it to heal. They called over a third doctor who agreed with Doctor #2. They said if I wanted it to heal within the next three weeks, I needed to get the nail out of it. So..with Bali on the short horizon, I agreed.

Then we went into the “operating room”.

It’s the Taiwanese ER in an old hospital, so the Operating Room is more like an eerily lit storage room with an old bed that looks like it was pulled out of Bedlam Insane Asylum. Old scary equipment, ancient defibrillators, lights that look like something out of a Tim Burton movie, and mad scientist-esque tools waiting their turn on the metal table beside the “bed” filled the room.

Doc #3 came in and he said he’d give me a local for the pain and then begin.

I was nervously laughing about the shot–I wasn’t looking forward to it. After all, this was my big toe–a local shot means you get it in the toe and frankly, there’s not a lot of get to be gotten on big toes. It’s just bone and skin, baby.

So he started by dabbing me with iodine, which stung at the time, but looking back, it was like a friendly tickle compared to what happened next.

I had bunkered down and braced myself for the shot(s) with all of a sudden the Doctor jams the needle into my big toe nail cuticle, while using my infected area as a leverage point.

Like I said before, toes don’t have a lot of get to be got. Look at where your skin meets your toenail. Do it, right now. Really look at that spot. Give it a little pressure with a pencil or your fingernail and notice it’s sensitivity. Now get an ice pick and jam it down into the cuticle–not once, not twice, but three times. Make sure you pick three different places, to really maximize the pain factor.

I’d like to say that is the end of the pain, but it’s not. The doctor neglected to tell me that the anesthesia’s purpose was for “post-op” and not the actual “removal”, which would occur before it could even begin to kick in (it takes a few minutes). So, without a moment’s delay, he grabbed the medical scissors and CUT MY BIG TOENAIL IN HALF.

NO ANESTHETIC!

As I was writhing in pain, uncontrollable tears streaming down my face, Nick was holding my hand, looking at my toe with a utterly horrified look on his face.

Then came the tweezers that he used to not once, but twice rip the still-attached, still full-of-feeling toe nail right outta its peaceful bed. I was pretty much screaming, curled up in as much as a fetal position that I could physically achieve at this point.

Then he said, “All done”, jammed some gel on it, spent five minutes wrapping it up like the Christmas Present from Hell and had Nick squeeze it for another five minutes to stop the profuse bleeding.

I was twitching on the hospital bed, unable to really speak or think and trying not to cry–not just out of pain, but that was a darn scary experience–right out of left field.

The doctor wrote me a prescription for a painkiller and antibiotic gel and then sent me on my way.

I’m so, so, so, so glad Nick was here for me on this (though he always is!) and that he held my hand and sympathized during that terrorizing ordeal.

I have to wash and re-wrap twice a day, but hopefully this will heal well enough for my to get in the water by next Sunday–we are going on a surf vacation after all! I would be pretty sad if I didn’t get to surf on it!

So that’s my story. Have you ever had a scary/traumatic hospital experience at home or abroad? I want to hear about it!

****EDIT

Either check the comments for the link or click on the right-hand side link of “Ryan and Leslie in the Gambia” for Ryan’s story.  It’s hilariously (terrifyingly?) similar.

And then I have these crippling, pathetic fears of inadequacy. The shadows that fall in the lonely time between projects; these doubts I always keep just far enough away from my conscious mind, just far enough that they seep in during the most unexpected moments.

I try to believe in myself, in what I do, in what I want to do, BUT.

I can’t help feeling like I’m chasing smoke signals and double rainbows. That I’m really not that special or smart or prepared to create NEW knowledge in a world already so jam packed with crap, and I’m constantly trying to sift out what’s important.

What is important?

What is happiness and fulfillment? What are we all going after anyway? Why do I need this? What am I even doing?

Curses to being born smart enough to ask these questions and not smart enough to blow everyone away with my answers.

These are my dark thoughts (obviously). The doubts.

So, how do you know what is the right path for you to take? I’m really asking you, personally. When you’re at one of these demon-ridden self-doubt-slingin’ misery crossroads, to whom or what do you look for inspiration?

I’m not desperate, I’m just (understandably) confused. Perhaps I wear my heart on my sleeve as it were.

I mean, are you supposed to follow your “heart”? or your brain” or some how you know what god is planning? ask your friends and majority rules?  make a venn diagram? flip a coin? What’s the deal?

What do you think?

On Sunday, Nick, Duane, and I borrowed the car to make our (now) weekly surf trip to Zhunan. We knew there was a typhoon on the horizon and the wave report claimed there would be 2+ meter waves, which is unheard of for our experience at the beach.

When I say there was a typhoon “on the horizon”, I mean that it was a gorgeous, Sunday morning and the typhoon wasn’t going to come until late Monday afternoon/evening, in about 36 hours.

After the hour-long drive, we arrived at the beach and noticed there were no cars in the parking lot. It WAS significantly earlier than we usually go, so we figured no one was out this early/maybe they’re afraid of the typhoon.

We decided to check out the waves before renting boards, just to see what was going on with the ocean. As we made our way past the usually busy snack shacks and rental places, we noticed that everything was closed and secured–no rental today!

If you have ever been to Zhunan, then you know that the parking lot is a long way from the beach. You walk along a long sidewalk for about four minutes, until you come to a sandy, tree-filled pathway, which goes on for another 60 feet or so. After that there is a steep, tall sandy hill you have to walk down to get on to the “beach” and, depending on the tide, the actual water is anywhere from 100-300 feet away from the bottom of the hill.

From your car to the water is about a 15 minute walk. It’s pretty inconvenient when you have a surfboard.

So as we’re walking towards the beach, we notice two young Coast Guard dudes, standing guard on the sidewalk, wearing their head-to-toe, neon orange jumpsuits complete with inflated life jackets on their shoulders and necks (bear in mind, this is still about 300 feet away from the water, and up a 30 foot hill from the sand.

They had pulled a yellow “caution” tape across the side-walk, even before the sandy/tree-lined area.

They started with the typical “Buhao yisi”, which is basically a whiny thing people say that is kind of like, “I’ sorry/I’m embarrassed, followed by “The beach is closed.”

Us: Aw, really? That’s too bad. Can we at least go see the waves? We came to surf and heard they were big.

Them: No. It’s dangerous. No one can go on the beach.

Us: Oh, we don’t want to go on the beach, we just want to stand on top of the hill, where you can see the water, and take a quick look.

Them: No. There’s a typhoon. You can’t go on the beach and get in the water.

Us: …yea, we know. We just want to walk ten feet past that “Caution” rope to the place where you can actually see the water, look for 20 seconds, and then come back. We can’t see the water here because of the trees.

Them: No. Buhao yisi. It’s too dangerous to go on the beach. It’s closed (they show us an official government paper that apparently says it’s closed)

[Keep in mind that we're still at least 300 feet away from the water]

Nick: So you’re saying that just LOOKING at the water from 300 feet away is too dangerous today, because there will be a typhoon tomorrow? (He actually used the word “threatening” for dangerous, as in, the ocean will threaten our safety)

Them: Yes. (They tap the official order again)

[an old lady comes up from the sandy area, under the rope]

Us: What about that old lady? She just came from the beach!

Them: No, she didn’t.

Us: What? Yes she did! Look!

Them: No, she was just walking (sanbu) around.

Us: Well, can we just go ’sanbu’ too?

Them: No, the beach is closed. (They flash the government order again)

Us: Yea…ok. Thanks, guy.

…And that’s a crappy thing about Taiwan. “We have a government order. Having a government order means we follow it exactly, to the extreme, and make absolutely no room for personal judgment, logic, or sense.” Anytime you are put in a situation like this and you make a really convincing, logical case they just laugh nervously, say “buhao yisi” and tap on the official order. It’s weird.

It kind of feels like a combination of Catch 22 and Animal Farm sometimes. People following orders blindly, going in circles forever.

Yes, I understand that a typhoon coming, although 36 hours away, might already be affecting the ocean, causing large swells and choppy waves. Yes, I agree that it would be dangerous to get in water like that for unexperienced swimmers (almost all Taiwanese people). No, I have no interest in getting in, or even near the water. I don’t want to go against your little government order, I’m just saying that I’ll probably be safe standing 100 feet away from the water, on a hill that’s quite a bit above the beach for 20 seconds while I look at what waves look like during a typhoon. That’s not ok? Uh, what?

Isn’t the law flexible? In a democratic society, you don’t enforce 100% of the laws to the fullest extent all of the time. You let people speed 5 mph over the limit, let the occasional underage drinkers go at a party, let someone walk ten feet past the “Caution” tape (that’s only located at the spot because that’s where the most convenient trees are) to get a quick look at the ocean.

it’s when people take the leniency of the laws to the extreme, when peoples’ safety is truly endangered, that sticking to the books is important–going over the speed limit in a school zone, drinking and then driving, actually getting anywhere close to the water in the beach example.

I think one reason its different is because of the government here. In the U.S., we’ve had a couple hundred years to test the limits of our police-forces and for our officials to trust our own judgment. Everyone knows it’s acceptable to drive 5-7 mph over on the highway, but everyone also knows that driving 15-20 over is a big risk. We’ve drawn our own lines on what is acceptable “bending” of the law.

But in Taiwan, this democracy thing is relatively new. Not everyone has grown-up in a society with the collective knowledge of law–what is too much, what is acceptable. And so they’re always pushing their limits on what they can do. It’s probably easier for the police to just say “No!” to everyone, no matter how dumb it is, instead of having to justifying themselves to dozens of other people who say, “But you let THEM go!”

Anyway, this is turning into something other than I had planned. I was just going to tell you a story for once, instead of going into some diatribe about how an isolated incident has some deeper representation for the culture as a whole. Whatever.

Still looking at grad schools, getting some really nice advice and insight from directors and professors at different programs–ah, academia. Love!

What a day, what a day.

Now it’s Sunday morning–6:21 a.m. actually!  I’ve been awake since about 5:30 with nervous energy, so I decided to write a blog entry.

I have some semi-banal news:

1: Nick sold, like, a lot of our furniture, as he is leaving Taiwan in less than a month and I’m leaving in about six months.  We are now down our coffee table, nice blue sofa, big bookcase, tv stand,  wonderful writing table, and our Wii (maybe more stuff/).  We have (had) a chipped, Japanese Wii and it wouldn’t have done very much good back in the States.

There is a lot of backup furniture (came with the apartment) in our spare room (which is getting quite empty these days); though ugly as sin, most of it is usable.

2: We’ve been going surfing every Sunday for about five weeks.  We may surf today–the waves should be up to two meters because of an upcoming, Tuesday typhoon!  If the weather is nice, we’re totally going today.  I love it!  Bali is in two weeks or so!

3: As something always has to be “wrong” with me, I have a new ailment.  Last Sunday, before we went surfing, I pulled a hangnail out of my big toe (lovely, I know).   We surf in Zhunan, which is not the nicest, cleanest, most pristine beach ever and long story short, my toe got WAY infected.

Like, it’s been a week an I can’t put any weight on my big toe when I walk.  The infection has spread a little bit, so the area around my nail bed is big and swollen and red/white, but it is mostly contained above my first knuckle.  It is constantly throbbing in pain, and the smallest amount of pressure on or near it sends blistering, agonizing shocks of pain through my toe/foot.

Is this something I should go to the doctor about?

Who knows.  I feel like it will go away on its own, but it is a really, really mean infection.  Gross rot toe. Ew.

4: Yesterday was a lovely day.  After selling our furniture to Eric, he came with us to Flavors of India (link via my magazine), our favorite local Indian place and we gorged on tastiness–Palak Paneer, Chana Masala, Chicken Bharta, and Veggie Jahlfrazie.  We go at least once a week, but it is nice to go with more people, so you can get more dishes! Yum!

After moving/cleaning/re-arranging, we played video games all afternoon and then had an awesome dinner at M Thai (the best Thai restaurant in the world–we also eat here once a week).  We had shrimp cakes, pad thai,  papaya salad, and their most amazing chicken coconut soup.

How spoiled is that for a food day? That’s something I’m going to miss about Taiwan…not just the availability of great, close dining varieties, but also the fact that eating out in twice in a day is pretty affordable, and a lot of the time it’s cheaper than making a semi-complicated meal.  Eating out is the way of life here, most people don’t cook at all.

You certainly can’t eat out twice a day in the states and a) maintain a budget and b) stay healthy.

Another thing I’ll miss about Taiwan is what we did after dinner.  Nick wants to bring some decent Asian tea back to the U.S., so after dinner, we stopped by the tea store and stayed for about an hour.  The sales guy asked us how much we wanted to spend and what we were looking for and then we just sat there, as he brewed all kinds of tea (cha 茶, in Chinese) for us to try and we chatted a bit about proper “pao” (brewing) methods, etc.

Although we sort of “drink tea” in the U.S., we don’t really have a “tea culture”, beyond the southern sweet tea and gourmet, organic yuppie tea bags (I’ve bought them, too).  But in Taiwan, they participate in a tradition that is thousands of years old with deep appreciation and discerning taste.  One fun option to the bar on Saturday night is the teahouse.

These antique-looking places, with floor-level tables and large koi ponds, allow visitors to soak up the peaceful nights with a hot, fragrant cup of Oolong, red, or green tea.  This goes on for pot after pot; it feels pretty classy. It’s not Shinto tea ceremony, but you can get little, savory tea snacks to go along with your leaves. Yum, yum.

I’ll miss that.

I’ll also miss the feeling that I have money.  With our jobs and humble lifestyle and both of our natural tendencies towards not buying things (clothes, “toys”, movies, decor things for the apartment, etc), we can spend all of our money on food, which, on average, is much less expensive here than in the States.

I feel like I’m going to go back to the U.S. and go back to school, and go back to eating cheap food a lot, instead of the tasty variety of yummy things we get here.  I don’t mean that we eat gourmet dates foie gras and salmon every night, I just mean we can order more than we can eat at a local restaurant and spend $9 USD for two people.  It’s a good feeling–too bad it can’t last!

Ok, I feel like I either need to stop it here or I’m going to ramble on even longer.   I just feel the compulsion to talk about things.  You might feel like, as my friend Tatiana’s co-worker asked her, “Doesn’t anyone talk to you at home?”, but that’s too bad.  You’re on my blog and that’s that.

Have a nice week/weekend–if you have a blog, let me know, I love reading other peoples’ blogs a whole lot!

“Don’t Move. They’re coming soon. Everything’s going to be ok.”

“What’s your name? No, don’t close your eyes. No don’t move. I know it hurts, it hurts, it hurts”

“Your head is hurt. Maybe your back, too. You have to wait. Don’t try. How old are you? Can you hear me?”

“Can you speak?”

That’s in Chinese.

And in a growing pool, on charcoal, yellow-painted pavement the blood is dark and shiny. His head, cracked open on the road, like his downed scooter, his rain gear, plastic bags, a helmet, and bottles spilling out of the seat compartment, littering the dark underpass.

Cracked, like the mangled car grill, like the thick windshield; it looks like veined ice in the passing cars’ headlights. The driver, sobbing hysterical in the phone telling the ambulance to come! come! come!

I didn’t know what to expect when I walked around the car. We were at the stop light, we heard and looked. I Through the driver’s window I saw a body sailing through the air–all limbs and the scooter seat exploded, throwing chaos everwhere.

No one was getting out of the car. We came, my knees shaking, running around the car in slow motion, looking to where I’m sure something horrible had poured out of the night.

The man was dead, I looked at him. He looked dead. Glazed over, half-open eyes, still, his head in a puddle of blood. I reached out to touch him and heard someone scream, “Don’t touch him!”

That was in English.

I looked up, the voice, the man. Someone I knew. The passenger of the car was a friend of ours–an unlikely person to see in a situation like this. He and his girlfriend had been driving to a friend’s house and BAM! Their lives changed.

A groan.

He isn’t dead. Heisn’tdead. He isn’t dead! The chaos. His girlfriend, hysterical on the phone, me knees still shaking. The man moving.

I made a decision. I ran to him, knelt down, grabbed his hand and started talking. His eyes, unable to focus. I told him my name–I asked him questions, I told him not to move (though he tried, which was a great sign in a way). I squeezed his fingers, held his wrist. He was weak. He was hurt.

My Chinese is poor, “What’s your name?” he didn’t say. “It hurts,” was his response.

“I know, just a few minutes more; it’s going to be ok.”

How did it sound to him?

One minute he’s driving his scooter. The next he’s on the pavement with severe head trauma and maybe a broken leg, looking up at some white stranger (three actually) who’s telling him in broken Chinese that he can’t move and to relax and breathe.

Surreal–even for a cranium injury.

We put a pack of tissues under his head, but no one wanted to move his head/neck/back at all–yeah, it was that scary.

I held his hand until the EMTs got there (quite quickly). I held his hand until they placed the body board next to him and carefully situated him on it.

After the drove away there was some blood on the road. His sandals were here and there. Betel Nut dotted the ground, artistically rolling out of a half-chewed bag in the madness.

Then the ambulance was gone. It was time for us the leave; we left our friends and the broken machines on the road. We left the glass and the trash and the blood and continued on to whatever we were doing before, driving our own scooter just a little bit slower, a little more cautiously.

I looked back to see the lights passing along the scene in the darkness and the two silhouettes who stood there, all awkward arms and puckered expressions. I wrapped my arms around Nick a little tighter–my hand was still warm.

And so, with a serious face and a committed attitude, I registered for the GRE today.

(I also paid $195 USD for it…blughs)

So I’m officially putting forth an effort to put steps in motion to go to grad school.

Taiwan has a weird two-parter system, so I’m taking the Analytical Writing part on Sept. 10 and the Quantitative Reasoning/Verbal part on Oct. 25–the same day as a bellydance performance! (boo.)

So, for about four days, I’ve been trying to brush up on/learn math. Today marks the first day where I actually threw my notebook across the room in frustration–I made it all the way to Day 4.

My problem with math is that I suck at it.

All of my computations will be correct, but I’ll make these STUPID errors (forget to put a negative sign, write 3 instead of 30, etc) that just send my answers off to left field. I just don’t have a mathematical brain–not like Nick does.

I can, however, do long division, a skill I had previously believed had been marooned on calculator island.

So, yar.

In other news, we’ve been going surfing almost every weekend and there’s no beating that. Bali is in just a few weeks. And Nick is leaving in just about a month.

Also, my brother’s birthday is tomorrow (the 17th), so why not find him at his blog We Own the Moon and wish him a happy, almost-30 type of day.

Have a pleasant Thursday, Jen

Title: Religions of Asia, Third Edition
Contributors: John Y. Fenton, Norvin Hein, Frank E. Reynolds, Alan L. Miller, Niels C. Nielsen, Jr., Grace G. Burford, and Robert K.C. Forman (General Editor)

( Man, I hope if I’m ever a professor or scholarly writer, I don’t turn my name into Jennifer L. Nafziger).

Review:

Religions of Asia provides a very basic outline of major religions trends in Asia and the development of those religions in a socio-political, cultural, and sometimes geographical context.

It is a pretty dry read–not the most engaging and accessible, but it is helpful to get a general outline on religious theory in India, China, Japan, and occasional diversions into other South-East Asian countries.

It is not a good source for very-detailed analysis of the major religions of in the region.  But then, what can you expect from a collection of essays that seek to define and organize thousands of years of religious motivation of the most populated area on earth…in 216 pages?

It would probably be more interesting to you if you already have some kind of understanding of Hinduism, Buddhism, Confucianism, or Daoism, as well as a base understanding of history in Asia.  Or if you just have the patience to get through it.  Religions of Asia does do a nice job of identifying major sects and trying  to emphasize the interplay of the above religions in places like China and Japan.

Though it creates more questions than it answers, it is a great book for finding out what you might be interested in knowing more about for further reading.  Also, I found the glossary of terms in the back quite helpful.

It is also quite old (12 years), though I don’t know if there are newer editions, so the most modern of trends are not up-to-date, but that’s ok–12 years is kind of dwarfed by the 2500 B.C.E. the Hindu section starts with…

AHH!

I just wrote this uber long, poetic post about my weekend and then it was ERASED.  Grrr.

I’m not writing that again.

Here, take this:

-we went to Dakeng.  It rained and was dangerous.
-we met a wild monkey.
-Nick and I are going to Bali in August, so surfing in Indonesia woohoo.

Stupid wordpress.

I dropped my scooter yesterday.  It was dumb.  I was going up the ramp at my school that I go up everyday and somehow my back tire got caught on the ledge below the ramp.  When I tried to rev the motor up, to get it up the step, the whole thing just fell sideways on me.

The scooter, still running, fell on my leg, scraping my knee. I bonked my (helmeted) head on a car behind me.  I skinned my hand.  My boss and a few TAs saw me and came running out to help.  I had hurt my pride.

I laughed it off and righted my scooter.  They helped my park it and grabbed my bag.  It was embarrassing.  Right now I feel like that is a metaphor for so many things/events/people in my life.  It used to be a routine–I pulled the scooter up on the ramp everyday without incident, but then, in one day, everything just changed.

The scooter dropped, the knee is skinned raw, you try to laugh off the pain and embarrassment of change, but it’s always there.  Lurking.  Waiting for you to get established.  To get comfortable. To feel like infinity and, if not perfection, then a strong lemonade-sipping sigh of “If this isn’t nice, then what is?”

Practically everyone I know is leaving, vacationing, breaking up, moving on, deserting, or vamoosing.  We did this Taiwan thing everyday with the same people, with the faces and chats and friendships, and then we approach a seemingly similar day, a day like any other, and life goes and changes it all.

Suddenly what I took for granite is eroding.  They’ll never watch me park my scooter again without thinking of that day.

I’ve always been sensitive to change.  To difference.  To bizarro-world.  I’m afraid of death like I’m afraid of going downstairs and finding my favorite dumpling shop has closed.

I, in my head, understand that everything has to change, evolve, come full circle, etc., but in that part of my head that regulates my feelings, in that part, I still feel sad.  And I don’t think that will ever change.

I don’t think I want that to change.