"surprise! i took wednesday, august 1 off work so i could spend the day with you for your birthday!"oh, colin ... you are just the sweetest thing.
i had just planned to finish sorting things out at the flat with dina's help and maybe i would get a present and a nice dinner for my 27th birthday. but colin had everything planned out and i was spoiled rotten the entire day. i was a very happy girl! but before i go into those details i should tell you about dina's surprise!
colin and i stayed up late watching a movie and waiting for the clock to turn to august 1 so we could officially declare the start of my 27th year on this planet. according to the taiwanese i would be turning 28 (NO THANKS) as all children are born at the age of 1 in chinese custom. so, whenever a chinese/taiwanese person tells you their age always remember to subtract 1. colin was just bestowing the mandatory happy birthday kisses upon me when i got a strange message on my cellphone. it was from dina and read "MAAM SUE, THE POLICE HAVE CAUGHT ME. I AM AT THE PRISON. PLEASE CAN YOU CALL ME AND HELP." hmmm.... happy birthday sue!
Dina
we had known that dina was illegal when we hired her, she had been illegal for about 4 years already so we never imagined that she would get caught while in our employ. now, this message worried us for several reasons. first of all, if dina gave our names and address to the police we would have to pay a huge fine for employing an illegal immigrant plus colin would've been hauled off to jail as he was/is also working illegally in taiwan. colin's illegality was not his fault as he had been screwed over by a previous school who had promised to get him an ARC, but never did. luckily he had then found another school that valued him so highly they didn't care if he was illegal. there are, in fact, thousands of foreigners working illegally in taiwan.
colin and i stayed up late watching a movie and waiting for the clock to turn to august 1 so we could officially declare the start of my 27th year on this planet. according to the taiwanese i would be turning 28 (NO THANKS) as all children are born at the age of 1 in chinese custom. so, whenever a chinese/taiwanese person tells you their age always remember to subtract 1. colin was just bestowing the mandatory happy birthday kisses upon me when i got a strange message on my cellphone. it was from dina and read "MAAM SUE, THE POLICE HAVE CAUGHT ME. I AM AT THE PRISON. PLEASE CAN YOU CALL ME AND HELP." hmmm.... happy birthday sue!
Dina
our second worry was that this was all a ploy. now, it seems terribly unfair that we ever thought this of poor dina, but we were suspicious because we had put ourselves in a dangerous position. dina had one of our sets of keys for our old apartment. we had given them to her at the end of the day on tuesday, july 31 so that she could go back to our old apartment and collect the many old things that we had given to her like old clothes and even an old computer monitor. in return she was going to take out the three huge bags of garbage that were still in the flat. (in taiwan, the garbage truck comes at certain times along main roads playing a loud song. this is a signal to everyone to grab their garbage and recycling and run out to the truck and throw the garbage in themselves. this is done because there are millions of tiny alleys and lanes in taipei that the garbage trucks could never drive down. so in taipei, it is not the ice-cream man, but the garbage man that plays a tune ;-). anyway, A) we were worried about getting our keys back before some criminal got hold of them and B) we were worried that maybe our old apartment had been cleaned out. we were so paranoid that we actually got into a taxi at 1 am and drove across town to our old apartment to check that everything was still there. it was. phew!
dina eventually phoned me at about 1:30 am. she sounded scared and was very apologetic, saying how good we had been to her and how much she was going to miss us. she promised to return our keys to us via her friend and only asked for the money that we owed her for two days work. now, i felt really guilty about mistrusting her! the only problem was getting our keys back before we had to hand them over to the new tenants on thursday, august 2. unfortunately we didn't get the keys back in time and colin had to run and make a second copy to give to the new tenants. we couldn't exactly tell them that there was a set of keys to their new apartment currently sitting in a taiwanese prison with our illegal phillipino house assistant, now could we?
dina eventually phoned me at about 1:30 am. she sounded scared and was very apologetic, saying how good we had been to her and how much she was going to miss us. she promised to return our keys to us via her friend and only asked for the money that we owed her for two days work. now, i felt really guilty about mistrusting her! the only problem was getting our keys back before we had to hand them over to the new tenants on thursday, august 2. unfortunately we didn't get the keys back in time and colin had to run and make a second copy to give to the new tenants. we couldn't exactly tell them that there was a set of keys to their new apartment currently sitting in a taiwanese prison with our illegal phillipino house assistant, now could we?
Birthday feast
we did finally get the keys back (and immediately threw them away!) and give dina her money and she went back to the phillipines. we had to find a new house assistant and quickly, but first i wanted to enjoy what was left of my birthday.
we did finally get the keys back (and immediately threw them away!) and give dina her money and she went back to the phillipines. we had to find a new house assistant and quickly, but first i wanted to enjoy what was left of my birthday.colin gave me the new harry potter book for my birthday and then made a special feast for me with all the foreign foods that we love that are delicacies and notoriously hard to find in taiwan. so i dined on special cheeses like brie and camembert, ate olives, smoked mussels and oysters and had two packets of salt and vinegar chips (most of this food is only available in one specialist store in taipei, jason's and costs a small fortune). we watched movies and i was generally treated like a queen for the day. i was very happy, but where were we gonna find another dina?
