Add Oil

Friends,

It’s been a rough week! I’ve been regularly working out for the first time in a long time, and work has been very stressful lately, so when I felt a little unusually fatigued and a little unusually sore I didn’t think anything of it. Then it got a little worse and just in case I went down to the nurse’s office and asked for a temperature check and sure enough, I had a fever. So off to the hospital it was, and right now if you have a fever in Taiwan it’s a requirement that you go through the ER, where they have a special setup just in case of covid (though there continues to be almost no cases here besides people quarantined when returning to the country). They have a lot of the initial intake setup outside of the building (open air to disperse the virus faster), including one seat that was inside a tent. I’m not sure what the purpose of the tent seat was, but it was that military shade of green and a little intimidating. Inside, they’ve converted a little garage area into a larger waiting room to put more distance between people, but I was the only person there at 10am on a Wednesday.

They did an xray, but because I had no cough or other respiratory symptoms they didn’t do a covid test. Then I waited and watched a guy in a hazmat suit spray down the room where I got an xray. Also intimidating. After a whole lot of difficult communication (the hospital by my school is a lot less English-friendly than the hospital by my home, for the record), they told gave me an anti-inflammatory and told me to go home and rest. The next day, my fever spiked up to 39.2c/102.5f so I went BACK to the hospital and was told I probably had the flu but they can’t test me because the flu test this year is super inaccurate so a negative result would mean nothing, but they gave me TamiFlu and told me to go home and rest again. Today I am doing much better, fever is lower, and thankfully work makes you stay home for 5 business days if you have the flu so I have more time to get over it.

The cost of getting two different medications, two “ER” trips, and an x-ray? Less than $100 USD.

Stress in the process: Fear of miscommunicating something important. Fear of being blamed for getting students sick, especially since lately I’ve been lax about enforcing my students mask-wearing and my own mask-wearing when at my desk (I always have it on while teaching). Fear of getting Carolina sick. Lack of confidence in the temperature scanner that scans everyone entering the school but didn’t alarm for me, 2 hours before I had a 38.2c fever.

But, hey, it all turned out okay. Just a little blip, a little jolt to make sure I’m paying attention.

As a result of the virus, we’ve had a little more communication than usual. A few more phone calls, a few more emails, the ubiquitous Zoom gatherings, and even a blue-moon communique from our niece. One common question through all of these is some variation on, “How’s it going over there?” or “What do you like/dislike about living in Taipei?” Which is kind of a nice question because even though it’s easy to say that we like living here, it’s much harder to say specifically what we like. Here’s what we’ve got: the language and unfamiliarity and new work environments are all very good challenges, being uncomfortable for a while is growth, and the politics thing. Especially in light of the difference in covid response. Of course, I’ve said all that before in this newsletter, so I’ll add something new: this chapter of our lives has been great for finding out what is most important to us and is giving us the opportunity to adjust our lives to prioritize those things.

I hope some of you are able to get through these times of lockdown and isolation with a similar reprioritizing.

Further reading:

• There is a period of time at the end of the night, just before going to bed, when my wife and I need a little more of a transition to sleep. We sit on the couch and watch some TV, usually a cooking show, but lately I’ve gotten really into these fishtank videos from a YouTube channel called “Foo the Flowerhorn.” Here’s an example. The combination of the music and the tiny aquatic animals is very relaxing.
• Let’s not rush back to business as usual.
• My friend Allison Grace Myers has a lovely essay up at Gulf Coast about her family’s path to adoption.
• Tressie McMillan Cottom is one of a handful of voices I really miss from no longer being on Twitter. Here’s a wonderful conversation between her and the insight-prying John Warner.
• Soup beans.
• The songs I have been listening to the most lately are “Think” by Kaleida , “When I Get to Heaven” by John Prine , and “Resurrections” by Lena Raine .

Your Chinese word of the day is 油, pronounced yo, which means oil. 加油, jia yo, is an important phrase both here in Taiwan and in China and Hong Kong — it literally means add oil, but it’s used as a phrase of encouragement. Passing someone on a hiking trail? 加油! Students are about to take a test? 加油! Almost done with a meal but too full to finish? 加油! (加油站, jia yo zhan, add oil station, is the name for gas stations too.) 油 is also a very important word at breakfast. 油條 are a crunchy, donut-like tube that’s used in many dishes. 蔥油餅 is a green onion pancake often served with a fried egg. And, finally, one of my favorite dishes (but hard to find in a vegetarian version) is 紅油炒手 — hong yo shao shou — which is a difficult name since it literally means red oil fry hand, but are dumplings in a spicy red oil sauce. SO GOOD.

If you’re rewatching Spirited Away in light of Ghibli movies being added to Netflix (as you should be), you might recognize 油 as being on the bathhouse. In Japanese, the character can apparently mean oil OR hot water.

Long story slightly shorter: add oil, my friends.

-g