In a phrase to cut these lips

Marts unleashes her (previously well-hidden) driving prowess at the go-karting tracks, which saw multiple crashes that day.

Snippets: A Day At The Races

March 2011

Our venture to Yangmingshan National Park to see the iconic cherry blossoms had left us a little underwhelmed. The little pink Sakuras were undoubtedly pretty and had us snapping away for the first ten minutes, but beyond that I wasn’t very impressed. So when we set off for the lavender forest at Neiwan a couple of weeks later, we really wanted to like it.

Its name turned out to be a bit of a misnomer. Less a forest than it was a sort of tourist oriented lavender-themed park, the lavender forest was all about kitschy fun - brightly painted wooden sculptures lined up among rows of potted lavender, deck chairs in pastel hues, and a cottage in the background staffed by a purple-clad, bubble blowing, chirpy young girl. There were some miniature fields and marked trails, but eventually, all roads led to the gift shop.

Having exhausted our main attraction with more than half a day to go, speed junkie Edwin suggested a spot of go-karting. Not everyone’s first choice of activity, I’m sure, but we were more than an hour away from home with nothing else to do. It took a bit of hemming and hawing, but eventually we got our driver to take us to a nearby go-karting track that looked decent enough by Taiwanese standards. 

To sum up our go-karting expedition: Some are born great (Bert), others achieve greatness (Marts), and others crash and burn miserably and are left languishing in the ire of the go-karting staff (Who else, but yours truly. Also Grandfather, but one does not simply take the piss out of the Head of the Mansion).

So while Bert and Marts took off racing round the winding tracks and the rest were content to find their footing at a comfortable pace, I went hurtling off the starting blocks, swerving wildly at every turn, and failing to slow down enough to navigate each corner.

Crashing was only inevitable; I lost count of the number of times I had to be rescued by the crew that day, who grew increasingly disgruntled until they eventually hauled me off the tracks insisting I had done enough damage to the car. Still, I remain forever indebted to them for dashing onto the track to rescue my vintage shades, which had flown off my face in a particularly bad collision. Grandfather and I would hobble back to the mansion that night with bruised shins and torsos.

Still, in the end the day had a productive conclusion - it was the start of Marts and Bert getting hooked on carting and traipsing down for regular Sunday morning races. As for the rest of us, it was the end of our carting endeavors. Perhaps it was for good reason that I had never obtained my driving license in Singapore either.

The night we found salvation in Santa Curva.

Snippets: Meeting Marts

March 2011

Being exchange students (and shirking all the academic responsibilities we could) meant that Mondays quickly became the most dreaded on our weekly calendar. Fresh off a weekend trip or a lazy Sunday sloping around the mansion, we would haul our reluctant asses to school, Wayne and I usually slinking in half an hour late for the dreary but compulsory Biochemistry and Pharmaceutical lecture. 

After which followed two hours of what we termed ‘boggling’ - the lecturer’s garbled mispronunciation (and frequent repetition) of the word ‘bargaining’ - which was meant to make us better communicators and negotiators. Secretly we thought it was a waste of time and constantly sought ways to make the time pass faster, such as snoozing when the lights were dimmed for the projector, or skulking off for an extended bubble tea break.

It was near the beginning of one such class that we met Marts.

We first knew her as Marta. She approached the empty seat next to mine with a tentative gait, and our eyes met briefly in the way of awkward people trying to begin a friendship. (Okay, the awkwardness was really all mine.)

One does not simply start a conversation by bringing up one’s drinking habits. So I first had to meander down the requisite path of Where are you from (Poland)-how has Taiwan been (Okay so far)-what are your hobbies and interests (Dragon boating)-etc before we reached what I felt was a socially acceptable point to pop the question: “So, do you drink?”

Marts would later tell me that she, not knowing the socially acceptable answer to my question, had a lengthy internal monologue before she threw caution to the wind and said yes. I believe it was at this point that I squealed in excitement, having found a new drinking buddy, and we began making plans to get together for drinks.

The next night, Marts came over, and we huddled around our tiny dining table for hours trading stories and hearing about life (and politics) in Poland. At some point during our inebriated evening, Marts told us about Santa Curva, details of which I shall not go into for I believe them to be too profane and offensive even for the confines of my tumblr. (Also because my memory of Santa Curva’s origins are sketchy due to all the alcohol - if I remember correctly the bottle of vodka I bought at duty free was depleted post haste that night.)

Marts spent that night in our mansion, the first of many that followed, and soon became a permanent fixture in our capers around the island.

The first of which came only a few days later - Kenny, Yinghui, Wilson and I had gone to do laundry, and returned to find a warning pasted on our front gate, courtesy of our friendly neighbours. Failing to decipher the traditional Chinese characters, I took it to mean something along the lines of Shut the fuck up or we’ll evict your fucking asses. Concluding that this letter had been conceived by some neighbourhood union in the wake of that night’s fateful drinking session, we hid the letter from the rest of the Mansion Mates and promised each other we would behave - at least til the next time Marts came around.

Because 台灣啤酒 was such a big part of my 2011.

This year has been, above all things, a very humbling one. You live your life thinking you’re all that as you approach 21 - grown up and ready to be an adult. At least I did. And then I realised that what everyone says is true, that 21 really is just a number both in youth and in aging. And that life is really what you make of the experiences within. And that if I could, I would live the rest of my life continuing to be humbled every day by the things greater than I am, and all the things I cannot fathom.

In what might seem like a symbolic act (but was really born out of necessity) I cleaned out some of my old junk today, stuff from my insensible pre-teen neoprint-ridden years right up to when I was an anguished seventeen year old. Felt extreme annoyance at Past Self while I was doing so (Y U NO EMOTIONALLY MATURE?! Y U NO APPRECIATE YOUR YOUTH?!) but I guess such is the admonishment that Future Selves always dole out.

I remember thinking, at sixteen, that I hoped I would never grow up and would always remain largely the same. Such folly. Five years seems like a trivial passage of time, but how it alters perceptions and responsibilities. I have peers getting married now, and other peers pressuring me to do the same. (NO!)

I am glad I am no longer the same person I was. And in five years when I look back at my twenty-one year old self, all I can hope for is that I am proud of the person I have been.

Thank you, everyone who has been here thus far.

Hello, start of/rest of my life.

An NCTU table tennis player scores a point from a long and hard fought rally during the Meizhu Games 2011.

Snippets: Fight for Honour (Meizhu 2011)

In Singapore, we’re raised to be good sports - to take defeat on the chin and offer a hearty congratulatory handshake to the opposing team regardless of how humiliating the loss. I remember being told, as part of a primary school cheer squad on sports day, that we were not, under any circumstances, to jeer at any opposing houses. Because ‘the journey matters more than the destination’, they exhorted, drumming morally upright axioms that would stick with impressionable young minds. Winning, despite it’s resultant glory, was apparently ‘not everything’.

So it was with no small amount of glee that I discovered, during Meizhu season at National Chiao Tung University, that all facades of fair play and sportsmanship were relegated unceremoniously to the sidelines when the Meizhu Games rolled around.

The Meizhu games, a sports tournament important enough to warrant it’s own wikipedia page, is an annual competition between our run-down-but-very-dear NCTU and it’s neighbouring Qing Hua University. Meizhu was 43 years in the making, and old rivalries ran high. NCTU had an unbeaten run over the past few years’ tournaments and was eager to add another one to it’s belt. And unlike Qinghua, which had the nicer campus, better academic track record and prettier students, NCTU had nothing much to boast of besides their past Meizhu triumphs and a large collection of engineers in a highly concentrated setting. The year was also Qinghua’s 100th anniversary, and NCTU badly wanted to deny them any additional glory.

For the predominantly engineering college, the coming of Meizhu in late February was like tickling a sleeping dragon. Flags and banners were erected at every conceivable empty space. The school gym, as Edwin reported one day upon returning from it, was chock-full of athletes pumping overtime and presumably chugging protein shakes like it was going out of style. The Meizhu central committee worked overtime coordinating performances, organising events and selling merchandise (which I bought into, hook line and sinker, like the Singaporean hoarder I am), sparing no effort to rouse school spirit.

Not that much rousing was needed. A student publication circulated every year specially for Meizhu featured photos from last year’s clash, with delightfully uncouth banners championing physical violence against the opposing team.（打死野狗！）It was delightful and refreshing. And in a startling display of school solidarity, hundreds of students queued overnight for tickets to the basketball and badminton tournaments, the most popular sports there.

How then could we, the Singaporean contingent, fail to be moved by excitement of such a large scale? Although not motivated enough to spend the night queuing for tickets, we secured seats next to the specially trained NCTU cheering contingent for a highly charged table-tennis battle.

For the better part of two hours we engaged in an emotive cheer-off with the purple-and-silver-clad Qinghua supporters on the opposite gallery, insulting everything from their lackluster playing ability to their sheer cowardice. To undermine them further, NCTU handed out banners that likened the other side to excrement and dead men. (One of the banners would later adorn the wall of my room in The Mansion.) To their credit, they gave as good as they got, although half the insults delivered in rapid fire Chinese flew over my head. 

It was awesome, to be so invested in this school which wasn’t even our own; I’d never seen the usually placid Kenny invest so much energy into anything but the pursuit of tasty food. NCTU lost the table tennis match we cheered so hard for that day, but clinched overall tournament victory the next day in the midst of a baseball match which did not have to be played to it’s completion, so great was the difference in score by the time it was midway through. It was to be the greatest showing of school pride I would witness throughout my entire time in Taiwan. 交大加油！

Snippets: Hey Gorgeous (Part 2)

February 2011

Home for that weekend was the top of a rickety bunk bed in Amigos Hostel, a warm, convivial corner shop space that two lovely mongrel dogs took it in turns to guard. It was a backpacker’s establishment in every sense; the row of sinks in it’s communal, unisex bathrooms perpetually lined with bottles of soap and shampoo in varying stages of depletion. Every morning I’d watch, with ill-concealed fixation, a caucasian girl clad only in lingerie blow dry her hair in the common corridor. (Much to Edwin’s consternation he never managed to catch a glimpse of her in the three days we stayed there.)

Daylight had not broken when we roused from our slumber on day two of our Hualien trip. In less than an hour we would set off, guns ablaze, to make the long trek down Taroko Gorge.

The bus ride to the starting point of our hiking trail was an adventure in itself. Roughly the size of a minivan, it careened dangerously around each corner of the serpentine roads that wound their way steeply up the gorge. A thin metal barrier lining the cusp of the road seemed more like a cursory afterthought than a safety precaution. I wasn’t sure if it was the magnificent view or the steep drop below that took my breath away.

Somehow we found ourselves at top without incident, and as the driver sped down to pick up more hapless tourists, we embarked on our hike just as the sun reached it’s peak in the sky. It’s warmth was obscured by the blustery winds at such altitude, but the brisk pace we proceeded at rendered jackets obsolete.

I never considered myself a nature person but Taroko Gorge something else. For miles, as far as the eye could see, it was just rock and foliage - majestic, towering rocks that loomed into the distance and gave way to the rushing streams below. Suddenly I wished I had paid more attention during physical geography classes so I might actually know the characteristics of all these rockforms.

Wind in hair, sunlight caressing our flushed cheeks, we trooped our way, single file, along the side of the road. I don’t remember what it was exactly that first hinted at the fact that we might not be on the correct path. Perhaps it was the first time a row of pimped-out motorbikes swept past, the fumes from their collective exhaust pipes leaving us in a cloud of dust. Or it could have been the first tour bus roared past our ears, and how we were forced to edge perilously close to that precarious metal railing, trying to ignore the precipitous cliff drop below. I think nobody wanted to say it at first, but soon, it became clear that we were not on the tourist trail. We had come to Hualien to escape the proverbial beaten track. Now, it seemed like we had got what we wanted.

What else to do but make the most out of it? Being, at that point, too deep into the trail to turn back, we decided to keep going. I can’t say I minded terribly; at least roads, rather than the sandy trails of forests, made for easy terrain. (Later we would meander through one of these foresty trails, which I found decidedly unspectacular.) So we walked on, each lost in their own thoughts, which was really not an unpleasant place to be amidst all that mountainous air.

It is such a picturesque scene I paint; I can say all this in the luxury of hindsight. At that time, it wasn’t such a picnic. So I think it was with some relief that we eventually stopped for a water break, and the boys disappeared exploring a flight of steps that seemed to lead down the side of the gorge to the valley below. When they finally reemerged, waving and beckoning us down, they were at the water’s edge. 

Nobody intended to be left behind, so the rest of us trod, step after solicitous step, until there were none left and we had to clamber across and down boulders until we could descend no further. The water was rapid and icy cold, the bed of smaller rocks along it’s bank expansive and welcome. I think that was the highlight of the trek, for me. We skipped stones and took endless photographs, laughed into the wind and let our voices carry.

Spirits sated, we huffed and puffed up the flight of stairs and carried on our journey. There were so many tunnels to traverse that we lost count of them - dank, moist caverns that were so dark in portions that we relied on the light of passing cars to guide our way, as we teetered along a narrow ledge that jutted out from the rocky wall. Lunch was a brief affair comprising a couple of onigiris that barely filled our stomachs, and inwardly I cursed my lack of foresight for not buying more. Five kilometres became eight, and then ten, as conversation dwindled and eventually ceased. Still we walked in single file, looking back every few hundred metres to make sure our group remained intact.

Finally it was close to sundown. We’d covered about 12km at that point, and decided to call it a day. Perhaps my newfound appreciation of Singapore’s public transport system stems from little incidents like this one - waiting along a sliver of road under a fast-darkening sky, sandwiched between a passing tour bus and a portion of the cliff missing a protective rail, waiting for a bus that was past it’s scheduled arrival time, all while nursing a growing urge to pee - it makes you grateful for what you have.

The bus did come, eventually. It’s plush reclining seats were a godsend to my aching legs and blistered feet. We had earned our beer, and a good night’s sleep - both of which made for a satisfying end to a long, long day.

Snippets: Hey Gorgeous (Part 1)

February 2011

We got comfortable, and then wanderlust kicked in.

It was two weeks after we’d arrived, and we’d since settled into somewhat of a routine. The third floor boys we quickly dubbed aristocrats for their ability to maintain healthy sleeping hours, and Yinghui and I grew comfortable with the receding stages of modesty that came with sharing a room.

Then came the first long weekend in the academic calendar. After having spent a rainy overnighter in Taipei the week before, we eschewed plans for the city and headed instead to Hualien, on the less developed eastern coast on Taiwan. 

Last-minute planning saw us do a panicky shuffle at the train station as we were almost left stranded without tickets, but eventually we wound up on a six-hour-long train ride that meandered it’s way through mountain ranges and agricultural land. The views were pristine and unspoiled, the snaking grip of industrialisation yet to descend upon it’s people. 

Being noobs at this train-travel business, nobody had thought to buy food before we boarded, which left us enviously eyeing the bento boxes of other commuters before dozing off in an attempt to ignore our gnawing hunger, which grew more insistent by the hour. So it was a ravenous crew that disembarked into a misty hualien night, and trooped into the drizzle in search of food.

And what glorious food we found. I don’t think I have ever tasted a better xiao long bao then I did that night. I’m sure it was due in no small part to my hunger, but oh, what delicious buns. Unlike their Singaporean, Din Tai Fung/Crystal Jade counterparts, these mini parcels of airy, fluffy bread arrived warm and moist from the steamer, a parcel of juicy, unctuous meat steeping inside pork broth so rich it flowed across the tongue and lit up every crevice of one’s mouth with joy.

Sated, we wandered languidly through the deserted streets. I vividly recall stopping at a roadside stall for barbecued meat on skewers, a common Taiwanese snack. While we waited for our food, the boys pored over the map of Taroko Gorge - what National Geographic would probably call a ‘natural wonder’, and the main reason we had come to Hualien. Excitedly they discussed the 18km hike - intimidating as it sounded - pointing out attractions we could see along the way, and picturesque, photo-worthy spots. Determined not be left out of the adventure, Yinghui and I agreed to go along, deciding that if we failed to keep up, at least we would have each other for company. Minds made up, we trooped resolutely back to the hostel, anticipating an early night and the next day’s undertaking.