Turmoil

1 October - 22 October 2007

Typhoon Krosa

october was the decisive month. the month where everything that had slowly been falling apart in both colin and my life started to pick up pace, run out of control and threaten to eventually crash and destroy us both. i started to get very sick that month. i was having severe convulsions almost every day, i felt nauseous, weak and depressed. some of my increased illness was due to the many dentist visits i had been making, obviously having someone drilling into one's head is not a good idea when one has a brain problem. i stopped going to the dentist. i was physically incapable of going to the dentist anymore. i also became sicker due to stress.

colin started drinking and going out more, especially thanks to this neighbour of ours, the fact that he was barely working and the fact that south africa was doing very well in the rugby world cup. (as i have mentioned before, the games were at 2 am and you had to go to a bar to watch them). this obviously didnt make me very happy as i got left at home alone a lot and felt very left out. knowing that colin was going out and partying with friends, living life and having fun made it very difficult for me to accept my situation. i started to spiral into depression and hatred; hatred of myself, hatred of my situation, my life and hatred of colin as well as anyone else that wasnt sick.

colin was also 'at the end of his rope', he was sick of looking after me and just wanted to get away, escape from the horrible reality of our lives. this led to many ugly, ugly fights where terrible things were said and done (things best forgotten), where both our hearts were repeatedly broken and i contemplated suicide. i became the bitter, old woman and he became the resentful, young man who "just wanted to have some fun for a change. for fuck's sake, sue!" it was the slow building up of tension, the typical relationship between the sick person and the carer; the carer resents the sick person for being sick and the sick person feels guilty for being sick. we were fighting so much that sometimes it seemed we had forgotten that we loved each other at all. we were tired, strung out, we had nothing left to give, so colin called our travel agent and changed our tickets ... we were now leaving on sunday, october 28 (more than a month earlier than planned). THANK GOD!

during this month of turmoil i, repeatedly, offered colin his 'freedom', i told him that we could just be friends, then he could live his life, he could party without guilt, find girls that he could have sex with etc. but he, repeatedly, refused me and often got angry when i tried to speak about this option. i was so depressed, so filled with self-loathing that i could only see myself as a burden, an unpleasant responsibility, a sick person who had nothing to offer to a relationship, not even sex. why would anyone want to go out with me? i loved colin and wanted him to be happy. i wished i could be a normal girlfriend so many times and i wanted to be the one to make him happy, but it seemed to me that that was impossible. i was blind to colin's love for me, to his steadfastness (stubbornness? ;-), his faithfulness and it must've killed him to have to constantly prove himself, but he never stopped.

of course, just because colin and my lives in taiwan were spinning wildly to an end didnt mean that the rest of the world stopped going. so there are a few dates, a few happenings, in october that i would like to highlight.

on saturday, october 6 we were treated to the spectacle of the strongest typhoon seen by taipei that year, typhoon krosa. now, i love typhoons. i find them mysterious, terrifying, exciting. so, the experience of being in a small rooftop flat in the mountains during a typhoon of that strength was exhilarating for me. i took photos and videos like a crazy person, watching the rain being blown UP by the strength of the wind and listening to the otherwordly roar of the typhoon. the wind was howling, yes, but the typhoon itself ... it was roaring at us; reminding us of the power of nature, the insignificance of the human race to the earth and its elements. being in a typhoon like that was a most humbling and magical experience.

on saturday, october 20 south africa won the rugby world cup and a nation, my nation (?) rejoiced. i was alone at home, trying to sleep, when it happened. colin came home drunk and ecstatic, but i couldnt share his joy. i felt completely detached from what i now viewed as his and other normal peoples' world. but one thing that did impact on me was that i was finally reconciled with my friend that i had so long ago dismissed (friendship). we had both changed during the intervening months. we had a talk about what had happened to end our friendship and decided that we had been friends for too long to throw it away. my friend managed to come and visit me twice before i left and it helped to ground me and remind me, just a little bit, of the woman i had been and still was. i was sue, dammit! i was BRAVE. i was INDEPENDENT. i was INTELLIGENT. i was TALENTED. i was WITTY. i was SEXY. i was HARDCORE!

Neighbours

August - October 2007

as always, when westerners and taiwanese happen to be living in close quarters, misunderstandings and tensions arise. how can they not? we dont understand each other's cultures and often dont even understand what each other is saying. i have experienced this numerous times in taiwan and had some paticularly special encounters with our neighbours.

first off, there was the senile landlady whom i could never understand and i dont think particularly liked me anyway. our conversations normally consisted of me pointing and trying to communicate in broken chinese; "Here. There is a problem with this machine. Please help." and her shouting and frantically waving her hands, which i took to mean either;

(a) "You stupid foreigner. It is not broken. You just push that button. Do you understand? Do you understand"

or

(b) "You stupid foreigner. I will fix it, but I am waiting for the technicians to come. Do you understand? Do you understand?"

either way it was quickly decided that she was useless, most probably because she WAS senile! and that her son was the one to deal with. he was professional, friendly and most importantly, NOT senile! luckily she didnt bother us too much except to come and demand rent etc.

Rusted gutter

then there were the strange people that shared a wall with our flat. The father was a taxi driver and the unfortunate, miserable-looking daughter worked double shifts at her job. They were unfriendly from the start. walking past colin and i on our veranda and ignoring our attempts at neighbourly greetings, perhaps even glaring at us - although this might just have been paranoia on our part. although, we did start to notice that whenever we had to make a noise such as knocking a nail into a wall, there was always an answering noise from our neighbours. it got to the point where even coughs were mimicked?! their veranda was a dump and their flat very run-down. in fact, their rusted gutter was left hanging for weeks after one typhoon, their veranda littered with rusted metal (hmmm, tetanus!) until the father decided to saw the gutter down at 6 am on a saturday morning (i hope he got tetanus!).

in fact, the most direct contact we ever had from them, the only tangible evidence of their loathing was a letter found in our gate one morning. i had had convulsions late that night (which is always noisy) and then colin and i had had one of our legendary fights. the gate was opened the next morning to a short letter written in perfect english, "Dear neighbour, Please be quiet after twelve o'clock as we have to get up early for work. Thank you." fair enough! and after that a concerted effort was made to be quiet by twelve o'clock. but that didnt seem to stop the passive aggressive behaviour. often, if we were deemed to be making too much noise, they would just open their gate, mutter loudly and then slam it again. so what?! 'no skin off my nose' - and we would continue to make our terrible noise.

now, the taiwanese are generally not confrontational and this kind of passive aggressive behaviour is quite common. if a taiwanese person has a problem with you they will tell someone else to tell you eg: your boss or your landlord. there are various cultural reasons why face-to-face confrontation is generally avoided (one of which is the concept of guanxi (and 'face') - which i will not presume to explain here), but even knowing that and living with it for 3 years, i still found it irritating and childish. i often wished that our neighbours would either come and talk to us directly or, preferably, just chill the fuck out! but that is because i am a rude, confrontational, bitchy south african ;-).

Toothless
besides these anal neighbours we had the british guy who, as i have said before was very nice, but made me very angry with his loud music, constant drug-taking and partying. i felt that he negated the point of me moving into the mountain flat in the first place. i had moved to get away from noise and stress, to enjoy some natural beauty and tranquility in the hopes of speeding along my recovery, but all that i had found was some crazed brit who incited colin to party and take drugs too. GREAT! just what i needed for my stress levels! besides him there was also 'toothless' (who has been mentioned before). she was lovely; friendly and helpful although impossible to understand, but she did spend an inordinate amount of time pottering around on the roof gardening when she actually lived on the floor below. but it was nice to have someone beautifying the rooftop.

there was one last neighbour with whom i had an explosive encounter, but i have no idea who she was or what she looked like. i do know that she lived on the 3rd floor though! it all happened one sunny day while rose was innocently emptying the bucket that collected the dripping coolant from our air conditioner down the same old drainage hole that she always used. a few minutes later there was a knock at the door. i opened it and there stood our british neighbour's landlady who lived on the 4th floor. "hi?!"

"dont pour water down that hole! how can you pour water down that hole! you dont understand because you are a foreigner! do you understand me?! how dare you pour water down that hole! etc etc"

"i always pour water down that hole. that is what that hole is there for."

"the lady on the 3rd floor is angry! her washing is wet! you made her washing wet because you are a foreigner and you dont understand!"

(intermittent screams of rage from the 3rd floor balloon up to the 5th floor)

"well, it's not my fault. i didnt design the building. i didnt know. me being a foreigner has nothing to do with it."

"she is very angry! do you understand?!"

"why doesnt she come and speak to me?!"

and the circular argument continued until even my senile, old landlady was involved. i was really angry by the end of it all, because i didnt understand why i was being screamed at in the first place, i didnt understand why i was being screamed at by a totally different woman, and i seriously resented the implications that because i was a foreigner i was stupid and didnt understand anything. of course i bitched about the whole palaver to colin when he came home and he went and shouted at both ladies who were arguing with me and because he is a man and 2 m (6'8") tall there were apologies all around. however, i still never met the mysterious banshee from the 3rd floor.

Living

17 September - 30 September 2007

Pavilion in the mountains

colin's school closing was a huge blow to him, both emotionally and financially. you see, colin had two things working against him; firstly, he was illegal and secondly, we had already booked our tickets ... we were leaving taiwan on december 2. no school would want to hire an illegal teacher who was leaving in two months anyway. but he was lucky enough to have a friend who found him some work at his school, but it was only a few hours in the afternoon.

at least i still seemed to be doing better physically. i was feeling so good, in fact, that i had started going to the dentist once a week. i had to have twelve cavities filled and taiwanese law states that if the dentist uses anaesthetic he is only allowed to fill two cavities at a time. these dentist visits were pretty stressful as it was a long taxi ride to the dentist and back and then all the drilling in my mouth created stress on the blood flow in my brain. but i felt i had to do it, i was only trying to be responsible.

there were dentists who were closer to the flat, but i chose to travel further to go to a good dentist who had been recommended by another south african. i chose this because most taiwanese dentists are terrible! i had always wondered why taiwanese people, in general, had such bad teeth when there were so many dentists around and dental work was so cheap and then i discovered why. a few months back, while still in our old flat, i had gone to a dentist down the road from us. she had cleaned my teeth and then done extensive fillings on all the molars in my mouth. i should have realised something was wrong when the fillings started flaking and coming out, but she just told me i was brushing my teeth too hard. huh! what bullshit!

when i finally started going to this 'good' dentist he told me that the other dentist had not actually filled my cavities correctly so, the cavities had been getting worse and worse the whole time i had been walking around thinking that they had been fixed! the other thing that i discovered is that many dentists in taiwan will do extra work on your teeth, just so that you have to keep coming back. this is a way for them to make more money. anyway, i started going to this 'good' dentist once a week to slowly try and fix the mess that the other dentist had made of my teeth. this dentist was definitely better and i felt proud of myself that i was finally getting my teeth sorted out properly.

during this time we were also grazed by another typhoon, typhoon whipa, on tuesday, 18 september, but this one didnt really hit taipei very hard and colin didnt even get a day off work, which was a good thing considering he was now earning so little money! the rugby world cup also started on september 7, but you couldnt watch it at home, you had to go to a bar at 2 am to watch a game. so, colin started going out to watch as many south african games as he could, especially when south africa started doing well. and me? i stayed at home alone.

View from the mountain pavilion (with Taipei 101)

but i will leave that for another post and rather end on a positive, victorious note. i finally managed to make it a short way up our mountain to a viewing pavilion. monday, september 24 was a beautiful day and we had friends staying over (as it was a long weekend) so we decided to make the short walk to the pavilion and have a picnic. it was wonderful, i was exhausted, but exhilirated afterwards and felt freer and physically stronger than i had in a long time. we also took these friends to see the beautiful temple on tuesday, september 25 and i took some wonderful photos that weekend, which made me very happy. in fact, it was really nice having these two particular friends come and stay with us as they didnt take drugs or drink a lot so we had a relaxing, friendly long weekend that i felt i could participate in (for a change!).

Dragon wall at the temple

i was quickly losing patience and respect for those people i knew who took drugs and drank all the time ... but it was an unfair emotion fuelled by jealousy, loneliness and bitterness.

Suddenly

10 September - 16 September 2007

Stars and stripes?!

I was still doing well health wise even after staying up late to take part in the craziness of colin's birthday party, but things were not going so well for colin. strange things had been happening at his school for a while and it had been very stressful for him. colin was working illegally in taiwan through no fault of his own, but had managed to find a lovely school that paid him well and didnt mind that he was illegal. but now it appeared that the school had been SOLD. changes happened overnight and suddenly the school had a new name, the USA american school (vomit!) and a hideous new 'stars and stripes' uniform that both students and teachers were expected to wear (double vomit!). the taiwanese love america and american culture blindly so, claiming that your school has some link to america often gives you more credibility and draws more students. ironically, the schools with USA or america in their name tend to be the worst-run schools with glaring english mistakes on their signs and in their textbooks.

and at colin's school, in true taiwanese style, NOBODY was told ANYTHING! everything is a secret and there are hushed meetings behind closed doors and then last-minute announcements are made that affect your work, your life. this sort of 'management style' (or lack thereof) is typically taiwanese and used to happen at my old school all the time. most of the time you would just try and do your job while all sorts of changes happened around you. you'd carry on until you arrived at work one day to find that your entire classroom had moved to a new building and that there was a strange taiwanese woman in there because your old taiwanese co-teacher had quit?! most taiwanese managers dont seem to think that their staff has any right to know what is really happening within the company or school until the very last minute. a bit like the current (Bush/Cheney) american government actually - maybe that is why they like america so much ;-).

My ARC

anyway, all the secrecy was driving colin crazy, especially as his status in the country was so questionable, even dangerous. we had agreed to leave taiwan at the end of november purely because that was the end of his contract with his school, but now everything was unsure. the new owner of the school finally showed her true colours in a meeting with the parents on the evening of friday, 7 september (colin's birthday!) where she announced to the parents that colin was illegal and that she planned to fire him. colin only found out about this on monday, 10 september because his manager (who liked him so much) told him. this same manager told him that the parents had revolted against the new owners pronouncement and many had threatened to pull their children out of the school if colin was fired, obviously the new owner had quickly changed her mind on that issue. but the damage had already been done and colin arrived on monday, 10 september to a school empty of staff and students. he had 8 students in total, where he had had close to 30 before and there was 1 taiwanese co-teacher left at the school that his much-loved manager was also leaving.

there was much discussion between colin and i as to whether he should even go into work on tuesday, 11 september. i voted NO as i didnt believe that the school would pay him what he was owed, let alone stay open! but colin decided to do the honourable thing and continue to go to work even after he had been stabbed in the back. i was so angry for him and couldnt understand how he could do it, especially after the terrible treatment that he had had at the school before this one where they had been so incompetent as to not organise his ARC for him in time, thereby rendering him illegal, a second-class citizen. but colin was right in the end. he was paid the full amount that he was owed, but the school closed on friday, september 14 and colin was without his lovely, well-paid job that had made staying in taiwan worthwhile.

personally, i was just astounded at how quickly and how thoroughly the new owner had run the once-successful school into the ground. within the space of two weeks she had managed to alienate both parents and staff and according to colin she didnt seem to understand why! apparently the last week she spent burning incense in little shrines outside the school and saying prayers in all the classrooms in a last ditch attempt to save the school. desperation had definitely brought out the religious side of her, but by then it was far too late. so, colin and my cosy little plan had, once again, been trampled by fate. how much BAD LUCK can two people have?! seriously! the one thing that made us feel better was knowing that this crazy woman who had destroyed colin's school, his job and his financial plans also had a whole lotta egg on her face!

Colin

8 September 2007

Birthday boy

colin's 26th birthday was on a friday, lucky boy! i knew that he was still feeling lonely and desperately wanted/needed to have some fun with a nice group of people. he needed to relax and be carefree for a change, he needed to escape the seriousness, the tragedy, the stress of our situation. so i invited everybody that we knew in taipei to a party on our rooftop and most of them came. the organisation of the party was part of my birthday present to him, that and me stuffing myself full of xanax so as to avoid having spasms and ruining his fun.

the party was a definite success. we moved our door-sized coffee table outside onto our roof, hooked up speakers to my laptop outside and even moved a standing lamp outside to provide some lighting. it was a beautiful night and people came and went from about 6 pm until 5 am. colin bought mescal tequila (with WORMS - of course!) for the party and i gave everybody gift packs of xanax (my doctor always gave me far too much and our friends were more than happy to take the excess off my hands ;-). i stayed up pretty late talking to people, videoing and taking photos, but i took no responsibility for colin's drunkenness. he ended up puking tequila worms off our rooftop onto the veranda roof of our landlord below us. luckily we had some good friends who looked after him and even cleaned the offended veranda roof below us. since i have stopped drinking i find drunk people incredibly irritating, loud and embarrassing and that is normally the point in the night's proceeding's where i go to bed.

colin and the rest of the party planned to take drugs that night, but it was agreed that colin could not take anymore intoxicants until he had drunk sufficient water and recovered from his battle with the mescal worms. i could feel i was getting tired and irritated so i went to bed at about 12 pm, well, i tried to anyway. i lay in bed for ages, but i couldn't sleep knowing that all my friends were just outside having fun. after a few hours my curiosity and jealousy got the better of me and i got up to see what was going on. people were all over the rooftop and in our neighbour's flat, fucked on ecstasy. i actually had a bit of fun with them as they were all extra loving, caring and fun (as people on E tend to be ;-).

I ended up only going back to bed at 5 am when everyone went to an early morning party at someone elses house. colin arrived back home at about 10 am and passed out, but our neighbour and a whole lot of his friends stayed up the whole of sunday, semptember 9 partying on our rooftop. it was a beautiful sunny day and i chatted to the partiers for a while who all seemed to be really nice people. i was happy that colin had had a fun night and i didn't mind that there was a whole lot of fucked people on my rooftop, listening to loud music and partying all sunday. in fact, i was quite proud of how accepting i was of the whole situation. "i am a cool sick person" i thought. i didn't really feel bitter, angry, jealous or left-out and i wasnt pissed off that a quiet sunday was being torn apart by my neighbour and his friends. but then ... that was the first time it had happened.