Friday Night in Taipei

It’s my first, last, and only Friday night in Taipei. Well, to be specific, it’s the evening of Friday the 17th of August 2007. I’m at dinner with some friends; all of whom I’ve met within the last 24 hours and probably won’t meet again after the next 24. But really, it’s earlier, an hour or two before dinner, and I’ve just arrived home from a day of sightseeing and museum touring with some PhD students of my dad’s former PhD student, friends of a friend I guess you could say. They call themselves Peter and Phil, those are their English names in any case: upon being asked how they arrived at such creative aliases Phil attributes “Phil” to his 7th-grade English class name, bestowed upon him by his teacher, and Peter says “Peter” is simple to pronounce—astoundingly they make good Phils and Peters, respectively. Phil is Christian, very Christian, and once informed that I’ve been to Israel persistently inquires about my experience there. He even gets me to teach him how to say “I love you” in Hebrew, and when I ask him if he’s fallen for a Jewish woman (often ill-advised) he blushes and laughs it off. Peter is 27, still lives with his family, granted that’s not unusual this side of the pacific, and is constantly doing the wrong thing in the most adorable ways: walking the wrong way, twice, as we try to exit the subway, going up to the counter to inquire about his food while it’s being brought to the table, trying to get onto the wrong bus. I feel pretty secure in presuming that Peter is a virgin, yet I can’t help feeling a strong admiration for him. Peter and Phil are both Chemical Engineering grad students. I enjoy their company and we have fun talking about things like Kobe Bryant (basketball is always a good topic with males from abroad), girls (3 single guys…), and food, but by the time I say goodbye to them our conversation, as well as our legs, are exhausted and I imagine myself falling asleep early and relaxing throughout most of the next day as all of Taiwan waits to hear the roar and retreat of the approaching super typhoon.

Now it’s 2 AM and Niels and I are getting into a cab that’s been sitting by the curb waiting for us for at least 10 minutes. We are leaving an ex-pat club called “Bliss” where we just witnessed some Russian-Asian techno/dub/bass-core music, primarily from downstairs where it was possible to keep up a conversation as well. Alissa, a native Taiwanese girl, and Morgan, an exuberant canuck with something like pathological life-lust garnished with egoism, departed in a cab just ahead of us. Earlier in the evening we all had dinner together at a traditional Japanese-style restaurant where we ate “Hot Pot,” which consists of choosing a soupy-broth (I got Korean-style pickle soup) of which you boil various vegetable and meats in all by yourself, right in front of you, you even control the heat and everything, and then you eat it. It was very tasty and fun, Japanese are good at having fun with their food, and my tongue is still burnt with reminders of the boiling chicken and fried tofu. I met Niels, a Swedish grad student, on the subway as we tagged along with Morgan to meet Alissa, whom he had never actually met before but had talked to extensively via an online dating site before coming out to Taiwan several weeks ago. The more questions I ask Morgan—how?/what?/what?/why?/how?—the more it becomes abundantly clear that he is basically in Taiwan just to meet these girls which he has been courting online for the last however long, probably long. And that he’s already met several of them and several of their parent’s. But I take it as testament to something that he’s still staying at the hostel, which he attributes his prior accommodations “just not working out.” So we get off the subway and meet Alissa, 20, (for the first time), Morgan, 30, gives her a rose, and Niels, 27, and I, 23, stand facing each other a little awkwardly but mostly contemplating beer and cigarettes and how we want them.

After making introductions someone else walks up to Morgan, a male this time, and they hug and rejoice with each other. Apparently this “friend” of Morgan’s, who was also meeting us at the train station and hasn’t seen Morgan in over 10 years, and I believe is one of those sons-of-father’s-good-friends with whom sons-of-fathers will so often develop relationships with based on convenience or need, has lived in Taiwan for the last 10 years—an English teacher who wishes he wasn’t English, or Canadian in this case. And he’s recently married a native Taiwanese girl, so maybe we can start to see where Morgan is getting some of his ideas. We get some beer and cigarettes at a local 7-Eleven and go to Leon’s house, Morgan’s male friend, and really squeeze in to this maybe, very maybe, 500 sq. ft. apartment and begin to settle into the damp, humid, pre-typhoon heat, and I open my beer called “Bar,” which according to the label is fun anytime, anywhere, and just as we’re settling down it’s time to go to dinner and Leon has to go meet his wife and prepare for their Russian-electro/noise show later that night at “Bliss” which we’ll all bare witness too.

Dinner, as I previously mentioned, is novel and good, and I mostly enjoy myself except for the strange bouts of “confess to a Jew” that Morgan undergoes in which he tells me where/why/and how he feels deep down, maybe in his soul, maybe in his “Jewish gene” (at which point he informs me of the likely existence, both scientifically and in his own DNA, of a “Jewish gene”) that he should be Jewish and has thought long and hard about converting and has spent time in Israel and how he sees some of himself in Jacob and I’m thinking about how this girl he just met isn’t paying attention, isn’t pretending to pay attention, and he sure didn’t come all the way to Taiwan to convert to Judaism, so maybe this could wait until another time. And eventually I think he realizes this and the rest of the meal is semi-normal with Niels and I playing with some octopus legs and Morgan trying to redeem himself with Alissa, which he may have eventually succeeded in doing by 2 in the morning when he left in a cab with her.

But now it’s 3 PM the next day and I haven’t seen Morgan yet, and he’s not the type of guy to stay tucked away in the corner bunk of his room in the dark typing obscure things like some guys are, so I’m assuming he succeeded in some way or another. I just hope he doesn’t convince himself that it’s time to move to Taiwan, which he was already pretty far along in convincing himself of. Or maybe he should move here. I’m starting to think he might be in some legal trouble or going through a painful divorce back home as I sit here and write this. Earlier I said goodbye to Niels who was departing for Zurich and graduate school and fair-skinned, protestant companionship. I liked Niels a lot though and I got his email in case, well just in case I guess. It’s sweaty and hot in this room which I share with 5 other males, all Asian. We smile at each other and sleep in each other’s company, it’s not so bad. In two days I’ll be on a plane to India, where things will be hotter and sweatier and there will be more Asian’s, so many more, for me to share my company with.