Outside the Pandemic, Mostly

Friends,

June 12 marked the one year anniversary of this odd chapter in our lives of living in a whole other country from the one we used to live in. Gotta say, this is not exactly where I expected to be a year in. Honestly I’m not sure what I expected, but here’s what the reality is: on the one year anniversary, I spent my afternoon at our middle school’s graduation ceremony, which was fairly normal. The chairs were socially distanced and most people wore masks, which was not the case at the high school’s graduation the night before. Middle school graduation involved a couple of speeches, mostly in Chinese, and also a lot of photos and a lot of awards and a little bit of singing and bowing and a lot of awards and a slide show with a lot of giggling so it was basically your standard graduation. The high school one was almost twice as long and involved some kind of skit that I think was a metaphor for drugs that served as the transitions between photo slideshows of all the classes’ memorable moments. It also had longer speeches.

For some reason, graduation was a month before the last day of school, which is next week. Normally school ends at the end of June here, but we added two weeks to our “winter” break which in turn added two weeks to the end of the semester. It’s miserable and my brain feels like a scoop of mashed potatoes. Which, by the way, is what they put on a breakfast sandwich with scrambled eggs if you tell the person buying you breakfast because you’re judging an elementary school reading contest that you’re vegetarian. My brain especially feels like mashed potatoes when I spend any time outside because I still have a pure single-minded focus on escaping the overwhelming sweat-inducing bodily function-impeding heat heat heat. Also my brain feels like mashed potatoes when I contemplate the fact the fact of not going back to the US this summer and the questions that raises, like: How much guilt is appropriate to feel over the fact that we’ve found ourselves in a position of being safe on the health front and not having to worry about the job front while our friends and family have not? How much guilt will I feel if something happens to someone I care about in the US after having made the very purposeful decision to not be in the US for a year and then a semi-purposeful decision to not be in the US for longer after that? What would I be doing if I were still in the US? If we had to move back to the US, would I even be able to find a decent job? Even though rationally I definitely couldn’t really “help” your friends and family more by being in the US, irrationally maybe I could, somehow, right?

Which is to say that every now and then I think about how much of a routine our life is right now and how much life for many people we are close to in the US is the opposite of a routine and that’s really hard to process. And even talking about processing it feels a little selfish because it’s a smaller thing than actually dealing with what people are dealing with?

ROUTINE: Taiwan hasn’t had a domestically transmitted case in ?months?, but we’re still wearing masks while teaching, while riding the bus, while panicking a small amount, while picking out a snack at 7–11 (current favorite — Korea’s version of Pocky which is PEPERO and is vastly superior, sorry Japan). Supposedly my school has had fewer sick kids of all stripes this semester, probably because of masks and gallons of hand sanitizer. Carolina and I are still feeling very visible, especially when we cough or we remove our mask after stepping off the bus. It’s an odd feeling. Carolina’s also still working from home with questionable amounts of self-preservation. And just like a lot of people out there, I’m glued to the daily IV feed drip of statistics, my preferred flavor being RationalAnarchy , of course. Also, I’ve settled on Taza’s Vanilla Chocolate discs as being my favorite chocolate sweet treat thing in the world so please mail me a few kilos.

CHANGES IN ROUTINE, VIS-À-VIS THE WHOLE SIX WEEKS OFF FOR SUMMER THING: Actually read a book or two for the first time since March. Learn Mandarin at a little faster pace. Write a few more letters. Bake a little more bread even though it’s way too hot. Ferment a little something. Finish a movie, a video game. Finish Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood while using a stair climber. Spray WD-40 on our squeaky door hinge and go buy a new set of headphones.

CONSIDERED CHANGE IN ROUTINE: I deleted Facebook a few years ago and then last fall I deleted my Twitter account because I felt like the occasional burst of awareness+anger it brought was probably not healthy when combined with a particularly heavy load in other parts of my life, but a month ago or so I reactivated with the thought being that I wanted to reconnect to the whole writing scene and maybe broaden my social circle in Taiwan some, but, yeah, I think the deletion idea was probably the way to go.

Though I definitely didn’t expect to when I accepted the job almost a year ago, I signed up for a second year of teaching at my school. I’m going to be helping run the student magazine, which will be a challenge and hopefully immensely fun. I will also not be teaching middle schoolers. I liked my 8th graders any time I was talking to them one on one but I do not have the personality to actually teach them for an extended period of time. I would like to use the extra time to do some quantitative research at the school, to answer to important questions: 1) Do students consistently perform worse on the last tests they take during their grueling eleven-test final exams? Also, 2) The bilingual side of the school’s student population seems to play multiplayer video games almost exclusively, while the Chinese side has a much more even split between multi- and single-player. How did this come to be?

I’ll report back with more information, gentle reader.

Further reading:

• Two quotes, one article, one essay — “ Weren’t those cases sufficiently outrageous? ” & “ Where were you? Where have you been all this time? ”
• “What happened in Bethel, Ohio? ” by Anne Helen Petersen
• Open a window in another house.
• Do you remember the commercials for Pure Moods ? Because I sure do.
• Speaking of music, I liked this song . Also this one (one commenter called Su Lee the CEO of Quarantine Bops and I have to say that comment is better than anything I’ve ever written).
• PS, Persona 4: Golden is excellent. I had some issues getting the PC port going but it was worth it. Also sad to report that I’m not a huge fan of Animal Crossing: New Horizons . I might be broken inside.

For the past ten months my main source of nutrition has been a calorie-heavy, spice-lacking, and nutrient-balanced subsidized organic cafeteria lunch at school, which helped make up for way too many noodle/rice/bubble tea-based meals outside of school. But this summer, those cafeteria meals will be gone and I will be doing everything I can to avoid sweating and so long story short I think I’m going to have to get into the habit of 18th century sailors: regularly making myself drink lime juice to stave off scurvy. Which is to say that the lime juice is a metaphor and I hope you have a good supply of yours. Wind, sails, etc.

And I hope it goes without saying for you, my beloved reader, but wear a damn mask.

-g