Have You Eaten?
Have You Eaten?
Have You Eaten?
Friends,
At our school, the elementary classrooms are on the lowest floors, then middle school in the middle, and finally high school at the top. This means when I am on my way downstairs, I often must part a flood of toddlers to get to the cafeteria or the exit, depending on where I am going. Yesterday, as I was leaving to go home, I came across a young girl who was going up the stairs. She was maybe in third grade, and she was climbing the stairs with a determined look on her face. She ignored me, but as she passed, she was muttering, “I can’t stand it. I can’t stand it anymore!” I assume she was talking about the uncertainty hanging in the air, the brief period between 2–3pm where every day everyone loiters around waiting to hear how many new cases have been reported, the changing guidelines and rules and expectations and glimpses into the future. Maybe she sensed how all the teachers and staff were anxious about words from friends and family, about the constant feeling that another shoe is about to drop.
Or maybe she just had to pee. I am not certain.
Taiwan continues to be, through who knows how many combinations of factors, a very safe place to be in the time of coronavirus. Every day we get a handful of new cases but lately it’s been in the single digits. Meanwhile you see slight societal adjustments constantly in terms of business practices, public transportation, the rules at my school, etc. It feels pretty proactive. Also, hey, our healthcare system isn’t primarily for profit so even if it was as many cases as the US I’d feel a little better here anyways.
Work has been exhausting lately. A lot of it is emotional. Carrying around my own private concerns in the back of my mind while also interacting with a bunch of other people who are also carrying around their own baggage. Work was already a lot for me before all this started. I’m pretty introverted, so being face to face with students and coworkers so much more than my previous jobs is a lot. I miss grading essays in my pajamas on Sunday morning as opposed to trying to get it done in a cubicle. There’s also the newness element — anything new takes more mental space, right? This job was a big change in the first place. Last year I was teaching a course for the fifth year in a row, ten semesters total of the same material, and now it’s totally different both in terms of the course content but also the mindset of teaching at a middle/high school. On top of that, we’re thinking about how to teach in the event that schools get shut down here, and just as I was learning Zoom the Ministry of Education announced Taiwan schools could no longer use it because of security concerns.
The story of Zoom’s meteoric, shady rise is going to be an interesting article/documentary/book in a few months, by the way.
Positivity: I’m looking forward to next year when I have this year’s experience to make everything smoother. This past Saturday we went to Ikea and bought a $15, 45-centimeter tall table, a purchase we should’ve made months ago. It runs alongside the bottom of our bed, and with a pillow on top of it, my feet no longer hang out in space if I stretch fully. We had
the best casual vegetarian meal
of our Taipei lives so far, including vegetarian red oil dumplings. There are so many promising looking video games I’m going to play as soon as I have a little more free time. We finished Season 6 of
Brooklyn Nine-Nine
and it’s probably my favorite comedy TV show since
Scrubs
.
In Taiwan, a common greeting is to ask 吃飽了嗎? This, chi bao le ma, literally means “Have you eaten?” but it’s code for “How are you doing? I’m checking on you.”
Further reading:
- I sure am going to miss this guy .
- There have been a few behind-the-scenes looks at how different businesses have responded to COVID-19. Most of them have been interesting, so I’ll pick my favorite: Texas’s own HEB .
- One of the worst things to deal with in teaching is plagiarism. My plagiarism speech eventually boiled down to, “Don’t do it, but I know you’re going to, so this is just me setting up my future ‘told you so.’” A lot of times plagiarism boils down not to cheating, but to time management or not understanding an assignment. I really appreciated the approach to plagiarism laid out by Harvard’s Computer Science Professor David Malan in this article . The logic and examples mirrored a lot of my own experience at much different institutions.
- I’m always a fan of artists being honest and open about their finances, so no surprise that I was happy to see Karen Russel layout the financial challenges she faces despite being a wildly successful author. I think she glossed over a few details in an annoying way, but overall an important read.
- I really miss listening to Glen Weldon’s soothing voice on Pop Culture Happy Hour , but I just haven’t worked podcasts into my Taiwanese schedule. Maybe one day. Fortunately, I still recall it enough to read this list of recommended video games for quarantine in his voice.
Have you eaten? Have you checked on someone? Let me know.
-g