Spun Me Right Round
Spun Me Right Round
Spun Me Right Round
Friends,
I am good at some details. I am not good at others. For example, rereading last month’s newsletter, I realized I forgot to describe the way sometimes I choose not to eat bibimbap because it takes so long for it to cool, and I forgot to tell you about the awkwardness of sharing a table during the busy times and having to decide whether to sit next to a stranger where your elbows occasionally touch or sit across from them and risk eye awkward eye contact, and I also forgot to describe the spot in the curry shop above where he cooks the curry where the paint is peeling off in strips because the pot bubbles away too close to the wall.
Or, for another example of my loose grasp on details, right now I am listening to our laundry rack rattle around in typhoon winds on our patio, because despite having plenty of warning that the typhoon was coming, I didn’t think to put the big hunk of aluminum where it wouldn’t bang around ominously.
This typhoon is scary. The wind is roaring, the power flickers every now and then, but it will pass soon. Taipei is geographically protected with mountains on two sides, and our house moreso as we’re on the slope of a hill as tall as our building. As a result we will never experience as much of the brunt of typhoons as the coastal areas, a fact which is disconcerting given right now the winds are strong enough that it feels like the building is vibrating, similar to a small earthquake.
There’s also the seal around our back door. I’ve wanted to repair the seal around our back door for a while — when you stand next to it, you can feel a small but steady draft of air coming from outside, and I’m pretty sure that draft shares a source with the occasional cockroach that wanders into our kitchen. So I’ve had it on my to do list since… April 13 (my to do list is my unread emails, so I know exactly when I sent it). But it hasn’t happened yet because our landlord didn’t respond the first time I asked, I haven’t asked a second time because our landlord hasn’t raised our rent since we moved in more than five years ago so I’m not wanting to remind him we exist too often, and my two attempts to communicate with a repair person (once on my own, once with the help of a Taiwanese friend) led to failure.
I am under the impression that this small air gap is Not Ideal in heavy winds. Physics! Who knew. I don’t want to Google it to find out for sure. If our windows break, please delete this email in the name of insurance. Actually, we don’t have insurance — home insurance is uncommon in Taiwan and apparently only fire and earthquake is typically covered for the rare home that gets it. So you are free to save this email as evidence if our home is damaged due to me being irresponsible with my air gaps.
It’s Halloween as I write this. October 31. Very late in the year for a big typhoon, which is its own category of existential funk. I’m writing a full week before I usually write my newsletters as I am not sure if I will feel like writing a newsletter shortly after the US’s election. When I try to think about it, all I can think of is 2016 and the numbness that followed. 2020 is a blur in my memory, primarily due to the black hole of Covid + being constantly on the urge of a high school teaching-induced breakdown. I see I wrote a very very short newsletter November 8 2020, and in 2016 I had yet to begin this newsletter but my email box’s sent items shows me that I wrote very little at that time. I suppose we will see. The handful of high school students I teach are surprisingly disinterested in the election, and the only mention from my university students was to ask when the results would be available. I think the grand sum of my political awareness prior to 2004 (when I was 19 and in a very charismatic philosophy professor’s class in northern California) was based purely on SNL caricatures, so I guess I can’t complain.
Ah, who am I kidding, of course I can complain. Shake my fist at the sky and ask what’s going on with the youths, and all that. It’s my due, after all.
It’s now the next day, November 1. We made it through the typhoon without serious incident. The power went off for about an hour, during which time we learned that we don’t know how to flush our (possible too high-tech) toilet when there’s no electricity, and we learned that the exhaust from the building’s generator is close enough to our back door to be a problem.
Remember that back door draft?
This morning I walked around the neighborhood, curious about the aftermath and bored with the breakfast options in our house. A little water had seeped into our apartment lobby, but otherwise things were good. Our patio drains performed admirably. Outside, the damage was primarily to sheet metal roofs on older houses and rooftop additions, sheet metal fences, and trees. Many of Taiwan’s trees have shallow root systems, which is what made it possible for a gigantic tree previously sitting on a slope above a park to tip over and cover half a basketball court. So the trees are fragile, but the houses are strong — non-concrete structures are a rarity in Taipei. Road crews had clearly been out already, with large limbs pushed to the side of the road. I saw some of them in a rush, with two trucks speeding away a little too fast from a nearby park. But haste makes waste, and when I got to the park I found a bucket of tools they’d left behind. Everywhere I walked people were out sweeping and gathering debris away from in front of their buildings.
Well, some people were. More people were doing their usual race off to work. A limb on your scooter isn’t an excuse to be late to the office.
I cataloged some of the sights in a little Bluesky thread here . This year, Taiwan has now seen its worst typhoon in 30 years and its worst earthquake in 25. Enough to make you a little nervous, huh?
Further reading:
- Mentioned this last month, when I wrote to you right after a DIFFERENT typhoon, but Annabelle Chih is a great photographer to see some sites from both this week’s typhoon and last week’s Taipei Pride. Overall, though, I’ve found a lot fewer photos than from previous events — I believe because a lot of the people posting them have moved to Threads.
- I have not figured out how to combine the following into a class that feels good and has solid evaluation methods: a) my courses are supposed to teach students how to be better writers, b) my department wants me to embrace good use of LLMs in the classroom, c) my classes can have 40 students in them, d) I value my mental health. I am fortunate that it has not weighed too heavily on me yet, but I have a ton of empathy for Victoria Livingstone, who wrote a very familiar-sounding essay about quitting teaching due in part to ChatGPT .
- Anne Helen Petersen wrote about cleaning , and the essay is so thorough and well-explored. There’s probably someone you will want to share it with.
- Two links over on BlueSky: 1) is a comparison of the World Series Game 1 Grand Slam across different announcers and language s, and 2) is an account that regularly posts different discontinued foods . Both are great.
- The editor of the New York Times ‘ Modern Love section for twenty years summed up seven of the most important lessons he’s learned from the experience. It’s really great, and thoughtful, and got me to reread a few pieces I’d read when they were published (as well as check out some new ones).
- One of the best voices currently writing, Kiese Laymon, has cancer. I am devastated, doubly so because I learned from one of his many jaw-dropping essays . This one is difficult and raw to the point where I had to readjust myself in my seat and look away several times.
- A music rec: I stumbled upon the Taiwanese “R&B, Neo-Soul, and Jazz” band 問題總部It’s Your Fault, and I highly recommend them. My song rec is, appropriately, 《下雨之後》, “After Raining” .
Before the typhoon, this month’s newsletter topic was going to be about my recent bureaucratic adventures. I know you’ll be on the edge of your seat waiting, but the end result is that after a lot of waiting and failed attempts, I’m officially a permanent resident of Taiwan. Hear all about the trials and tribulations along the way next month.
This month’s image at the top comes from a temple in Sapporo, Japan. Clusters of wishes like this ema/絵馬 are common at temples in both Taiwan and Japan. I think I’ve become convinced that wishes are better made public — the idea that your birthday wish or your personal goals are better kept hidden makes us less accountable, I think. Or maybe that’s just me, maybe fear of judgment outweighs accountability for you.
Whatever your autumnal wish, whether it’s a sheepadoodle or someone to stop smoking or the end of a bureaucratic ordeal, whether you say it out loud or write it down or keep it stored inside your heart’s left ventricle, I hope it comes true. If it needs to.
-g