H. Hsu Word Salad

Went to the open air flower market today, which is across the street from the rather renowned jade market (which my Dad informs me is "all fake").  The plants here are lush & gorgeous-because the whole damn city is like being in a teeny glass greenhouse!  There’s no need for a sweat lodge here, it’s close to a hundred degrees these last few days-punctuated by hot downpours and thunder and lightening.

Each day here I want a serious siesta. Reasons being: this persistent cold. (which BTW, like typhoid Mary I have passed onto Jolyn, who has then passed it on to her 2 colleagues, and who knows where it will go from there… thanks a LOT to P’s co-worker who started this!) Other reasons: it’s paralyzingly hot, my head is going to implode from trying to decipher all this Chinese in just 1 week, and I am eating a swath throughthe city. In that sense it is a lot like New Orleans! Hot, hot, hot, muggy,smoggy at times, wet, but YUMMY.

It also reminds me of the rain forests in Costa Rica/Belize. Except somehow I can accept the discomfort of the humidity & heat more in the "real" jungle rather than this urban one.  At least in the actual jungle there are beautiful, magical creatures to distract you. And in the actual jungle no one expects you to have to make yourself presentable.  For the life of me I can’t figure out how some women are wearing hosiery in this weather without keeling over from heatstroke.  If you offered me a hundred bucks (and I do mean US dollars)to wear pantyhose here I would refuse!

I am going to return home about as brown & as round as a roasted coffee bean. Ah yes, another tropical product only produced in the equator belt. Hmm. Perhaps a cacao bean too?  In 96 I discovered in Costa Rica that I am capable of becoming uber-dark, I can be Latina if I want to…

My sunblock here melts off within about 7 minutes of my setting foot outside, I have become one of those silly delicate flowers who uses an umbrella as a parasol in the mid day sun.  Then there’s the matter of all this FAb food, and the problem of going from a schedule of 2 hrs of yoga and 10 miles per week to…zero.  I walk to and fro from the MRT station (Taipei BART) & that’s about it.

In Taiwan-I am an "L".  At the night market, I was buying a pair of jeans and chose the size "L".  Mom kept saying that I was not an L, and the saleslady pointed out to her that "her waist is very slender, but actually she’s got a lot of meat on her butt".  Chalk that one up to the multitude of things here that might make one mad but instead just strikes me as hilarious.

Kind of like the additional things Dad warns me about…now we can add getting burnt on a motor scooter pipe, getting counterfeit Evain or Volvic, getting counterfeit money, losing my keys, blowing up the kitchen w/the gas range, shopping in excess and not being able to fit it my suitcases, getting mosquito bites (although this is no joke & people do get dengue fever here) and getting substandard bread buns. I am sure more will be coming…

Bastante. Enough for now, time to get ready for class tomorrow. And we have visitors, a friend who has come over with her white Persian to come visit these 2 cats (but they are jealous and PISSED), and another who has come over to shower as they shut down the water in her entire apartment block.

I miss my husband…which is not news, but I miss him even more than I had thought I would. hah. It’s ironic since I tend to be rather cavalier about time apart.  We’ve had plenty of separations throughout our relationship so I don’t think it’s a big deal-

but perhaps he is right and things are somehow different now that we are officially wed…

In a strange land, I yearn for my homegrown hunk of hombre. 

P manages to send me off with his nastyass cold, which intensifies on the airplane, and raises some panic in me that perhaps they will quarantine me a the airport. There are 2 severe looking uniformed people that do nothing but stand at the airport watching each incoming person walk across a sensor screen that instantly reads your body temperature. Too fevered, and maybe you have SARS…

I make it past the health and customs screening and wander into a time warp at 5 am on Saturday morn. (Left SFO at 1 am on Fri. morn AKA Thur. late night. Did not leave my accursed office until 7:30 Thurs.).

2 days in a row now I have been awakened at 6 am not by jet lag but by a poofy,beautiful, snowy white, bipolar cat named Yuanyuan who has an American moniker as well "Bunny". She loves to eat fresh fruit, has mood swings in a rapid cycler sort of way, but is strangely affectionate at that ungodly hour, rubbing her skull against mine and then wrapping herself across my head so her purring is felt in my head more than heard.

Meanwhile, my Dad is affectionately making me bonkers.

Let’s see now. ..

I have worked and continue to work in some of the homicide capitals of the world…New Orleans, Richmond, Oakland. I have taken metros in San Francisco, Washington D.C., Tokyo (not THAT was mind-boggling), Thailand, and Paris.

Yet in my time here in Taipei, he has thus far escorted me on every MRT metro ride, and has warned me about: being kidnapped by Taxi drivers, being run over by scooters,being dragged to death by said vehicles, getting poisoned by cheap chopsticks, getting pushed onto the MRT rails, eating too much pesticides or artificial flavorings, buying counterfeit stuff, getting conned by various riffraff, hitting people with a car door, tripping and falling on the remarkably crappy streets, getting mugged, running into imposter religious leaders,the apartment getting broken into, getting lost, and inadverdently letting the cats out.  Have I missed anything!?

I would go postal if all weren’t so damned funny/ridiculous. And besides, at my age I should be glad someone is fussing like so over me.  I know my years of experiencing that in this world are not many.

I have learned that one of the consequences of being a generally competent person is that it means often I need to stand strong and stand alone even when I am sad/depressed/tired/afraid/otherwise impaired.

Embarrassingly, I have passed this cold onto Jolyn, who is now suffering in relay with me. The otalaryngologist appointment for an uninsured Yankee like me came to a whopping $15 U.S., including meds. That even beats my $30 Costa Rica MD visit in 1996!  One can’t help but wonder what in hell is wrong with the U.S. medical system…

What else…well, I can’t seem to prevent myself from e-mailing the office, I am havin fun with the silliness of the "gift with purchase" fad which Taiwanese take to a whole new level (so far I have Hello Kitty pins, commemorative jelly cups, a free serving of pudding, 90% off my purchase, kleenex, & air freshener), and I am doctoral level functional illiterate who is thus far a pretty sucky student of proper Chinese.

Being ill has prevented me from hitting the gym and going to yoga which was on the original game plan. But I am getting a lot of reading done,& drinking all sorts of quality teas from my Dad’s collection. Although his Spanish and French red wines and imported coffees are probably doing more damage than good in regards to my health.

Time for bath and bed-alas, my homework will have to wait!

yeah, yeah 6-6-6 & you know what-all P & I can say about this new Damien/Omen movie is…"its been done". However, I am back from the dentist-halfway through the work of needing a new crown- half my head injected with so much novocaine that 1 hr later I feel like one of those ginormo Easter Island blockheads.

Sheesh, I’m a therapist and need to speak & have expressions on my face when I work! This stuff better wear off soon.

Going back to NOLA again was one of those emotionally bizarro experiences.  Any shred of faith I have left in the government doing the right thing gets razed to bits, the destruction from my Nov. 05 pics and the ones from May 06 are almost the SAME. This despite the fact that it’s again officially hurricane season.  Only difference is that now there are flimsy FEMA trailers around.  See for yourself.

http://www1.snapfish.com/thumbnailshare/AlbumID=43262821/a=6175961_6175961/t_=6175961

Yet going there I am always totally overhwhelmed by the warmth and spirits of both the locals who are still standing, and my fellow volunteers. My orange SAHMSA shirt colleagues who I’ve referred to as the "lunatics who run toward disaster instead of away from it".  It makes me so proud to stand humbly in their ranks.  Such folks who give and love and embody the soul of the phrase "the kindness of strangers" revives my will to keep on fighting the good fight in the face of the capitalist, soulless machine.

This last visit I had lunch with cops, ate at Red Fish grill 3 times in 3 days, had beignets and cafe au lait and gumbo that will take me weeks to work off my waist, walked through ruined cemetaries, looked into empty tombs, learned how to eat crawfish, had lunch at a Confederate honkytonk redneck bar, realized that my near-70 yr old friend Delma is more technologically advanced that I am, flirted with handsome firemen at the station, had a fab dinner of raw oysters, margarita & beignet (recipe for Pepto), stood on a puny levee and felt my heart break wide open, visited the garish Harrah’s, walked among the rubble of people’s homes, breathed in that Missisipi mud-air each day, sought turtles and alligators in the canals, adopted a temporary Southern accent,fraternized with fancy state reps and feds who are supposed to make the disaster plans that will save all our asses when the next big one comes along. I also discovered my  new favorite song (A. Toussants "Yes we can" find it on the New Orleans benefit album).

And always, every single time I am in NOLA someone buys me a drink (or many). You gotta love this town.  I also came home and proceeded to pass around divine treats from Southern Candymakers.

Perhaps I am being unfaithful, but I can no longer say I’ve left my heart in San Francisco. The new theme song is "Do you know what it means, to miss New Orleans?" preferably the version sung by Armstrong himself.

Can’t wait to take P there and show him this UnAmerican American city. Let’s just cross our fingers that it’s not hurricane-y when we are there in Aug.

Make Levees, Make Love - Not War.