Showing posts with label Taiwan. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Taiwan. Show all posts

Looking back

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Back in Mumbai, I often went off to Marine Drive to recharge, it was something about the sparkling little diamonds in the sea I usually thought that gave me peace. But only when I went off to Taiwan I realised it was also the clear, beautiful, horizon above the sea, uncluttered with cement and concrete that put me at ease. For the first time in my life just driving around from home to work was so beautiful. One could see the sky stretching endlessly from the windscreen beyond the buildings. Although Houli was just a small town in Taiwan, it would surpass Bombay anyday in terms of development and infrastructure.

It wasn’t just the external beauty of the place that made Taiwan such a memorable experience but also the simplicity and purity of thought of the people that makes me want to go back and visit the place. The concept of dignity of labour very much existed in practice in Houli, wherein the family I lived in dined with their domestic helpers and factory workers on the same table, in the same space. And my home-father even cooked me breakfast and served us food at times. Never have I seen such humility in our own country and I was pleasantly surprised because the people I was living with were probably the richest in that town.


ps: Shayne Rana and me have qualified in the Top 10 in 'The Wanderers' contest.I am super excited! So far we have got 150 votes and are at fourth place, the competition is getting fierce. I hope we win!

If you'd like to vote or spread the word, this is the link: https://apps.facebook.com/wanderer-voting/OR           http://tinyurl.com/6btekfg


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First impressions III: Beautiful Melody

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Initially I was thrilled when I got to know that I would be learning the saxophone when I first took up the internship. Who would have thunk I would be getting to attend an orchestra perform in concert. I heard the National Taiwan Symphony orchestra perform in Taichung city yesterday and it was simply breath taking. Music is an essential element in every school in Taiwan. And luckily the family I am closest to is very musically inclined. I have heard some amazing classical music-western and Taiwanese in the last few days thanks to Hui Yu.

And today came as a bonus, who would have thunk I would come to Taiwan, get to learn the sax and the piano and then attend two music concerts in the same weekend? Today I got to listen to the hucha, yang-qin, teetha, basoon, saxophone, flute among other instruments in a concert organised by Tzu Chi. Two visually challenged little adorable girls performed too. One sang traditional chinese songs while the other one Taiwanese song.

Its amazing how when the words do not unravel into meaning, yet when combined with melody can touch your heart so deep.

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Sharp resemblance

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Don't these flowers remind you of sharpener shavings?

(picture courtesy: Hui Yu)
I forgot to mention that I spotted these flowers on a visit to the mini-government Houli establishment office. The office structure is beautiful and was built by the Japanese. More pictures below- courtesy Hui Yu.

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In a small town named Houli

I am serenaded with affection



I devour the cacophony, the peace,

the beautiful sights and garbled sounds.

Breathing it all in and sighing it all out



In a small town named Houli

My house is built on a mountain



I bask in the beauty of the image

from the wooden patio of my room

I see mountains and hills

And mist and greenery.



In a small town named Houli

I teach English in Elementary school



I am overwhelmed by their love

My students ask me to sign on sheets of paper

They want to teach me Taiwanese dance

As I strut to class they shout out "Hello teacher Monica"

And a little one grips me in a tight hug unwilling to let go



In a small town named Houli

My colleagues are my family



I revel in the confusion and

grope for familiar words.

I stare at their hands

We are left with phonemes

Followed by nervous laughter



In a small town named Houli

I live with a local Taiwanese family



Modest and only to happy to help.

The children are fascinated with Skype

My home-stay parents try their best

to communicate with broken English



In a small town named Houli

Every meal brings something new



The food bland for the Indian palate

Every morsel melts in my mouth

Sea-food, spinach, green beans,

tofu, mushrooms, bamboo, rice and soup

I taste everything "without legs"



In a small town named Houli
I take the train to the city



My eyes waver to the huge windows from my book

On my left I pass green fields and traditional houses

On my right the mountains outline the horizon

Every train ride leaves me feeling rejuvenated



In a small town named Houli


I see nothing like in the city



A mere twenty minute train ride

And a gaping cultural difference

The ostantatious dressing fascinates

I walk throuh the lanes of the nightmarkets

Its a paradise -Every shop calls out

the smell from every food stall lingers

The track of time is always lost





In a small town named Houli
I feel I am at home.

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The Happy Taiwanese Family

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What is it made up of? Husband,wife and dog. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, many Taiwanese prefer having a dog instead of children. Maybe we should take a cue from them to control the bursting population in India. I have been tremendously fascinated by the cute variety of dogs I have seen here. And then on speaking to the locals what do I find out; I was so amused and shocked on hearing that most couples prefer dogs to children.

Below are some pictures to give you an idea.















No wonder Doggie parlours is a big business here. If I lived here I probably would have a dog too but a baby before that for sure. 

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Finally the truth about Bubble Milk Tea

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From the time I have stepped into Taiwan, whatever Bubble Milk Tea (pronounced Chunchu Naitha) I have consumed has been free. Yes, not a single penny spent. I know Vicky is probably burning if he happens to read this. And its the most expensive tea in the tea shops. They have tea shops all over Taiwan by the way. Its not the you can sit and kill hours kind of place, more like takeaway counters. So I have consumed liters of this tea.


Like I said in my earlier post, the Taiwanese love their bubble milk tea. But you offer it to any girl and you get "No! No! Too fatty". The tea has pieces of a black chewy substance , refer to image below. Vikas and me contemplated on what these yummy things were. 


Maybe sabudana,or maybe some exotic sea-thing, for all you know it could have been fish eggs. We asked people, we chewed and thought and chewed some more. Finally ladies and gentlemen I present to you the secret ingredient the "bubble/pearls" are made of and its potato starch! Yes, you read right. They love their potato starch and use it for a lot of meat dishes, wherein the meat is enveloped in a ball of potato starch and then fried and dumped in some exotic sauce. Supposed to be pretty delicious and that is the kind of stuff I will be missing out on. My school director has a theory about my queer eating habit, according to him I don't eat anything with legs! Interesting but partly true, because I tasted shrimp. And I am on a eat anything that you find in the sea spree right now. 

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First ritual attended abroad: Budha bathing ceremony.

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9th May was celebrated with great vigor in Taiwan. You would think it was an auspicious religious occasion. Turns out Mothers Day for the Taiwanese is almost as good as one. People go back home to spend their day to meet their mother dear with bouquets and personalized gifts. I am not sure how long this tradition runs and I am very keen to find out if fathers day is celebrated with as much pomp. 

Besides mothers day yesterday was also God Buddha’s birthday. A Taiwan based organization Jing Si organized a Buddha bathing ceremony to celebrate the deity’s birthday. I got the opportunity to attend it and it was marvelous.



 It was held in an open green space, in Taichung. It was a very well organized event, with volunteers keeping people in rows and columns strictly and attending to the ones passing out due to the enormous crowd. Rows of people wearing the nurses uniform, or a traditional Chinese dress- signifying they were part of the “commissionary”, University students in light blue collared t-shirts with white pants, others in either grey or dark blue collared t-shirts with white pants were all assembled in a pattern with the like colours together. The ones with regular clothes were assembled behind. I wonder how awesome the scene would have been from a terrace. In the middle stood the master singing songs and prayers that were interpreted to me by a kind volunteer. She was intrigued that a foreignor was attending the ceremony and that too from Buddha’s birth land! According to her and the literature I read later Jing Si ‘s philosophy stresses on compassion, being humble, living for “the now” and cleansing your heart first in order to purify the world.  

(Courtesy: tw.tzuchi.org)
Next to the master there were tables arranged on either side where ice Buddha statues enclosed in oval ice frames were placed on a slight pedestal with a vessels of water below and flowers places in front. At the end of the ceremony people were moving forward to take a token of a flower and touching some of the holy water and sprinkling some on themselves. Everything was so new for me and although I couldn’t understand what was being sung I felt peace wash over me. It was a surreal experience. 

What fascinated me was that the ceremony was organised in different locations at the same time taking the different time zones into consideration. It was taking place in three places in Taiwan, Malaysia and Indonesia among other countries. Through me the organisation is now hoping to make some inroads into India. The volunteer insisted on a TV cum print interview with some pictures. For all you know I could be on some Tai channel or magazine right now. 

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First impressions

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Taipei Airport
Very fancy, modeled like a 5-star hotel. Pre-paid mobile phone cards available and so are foreign exchange transactions performed. Maps, museum brochures, tourist information and important numbers also available. Pay-phones all over are money-sucking machines. Express bus, U-bus, High Speed Railway bus all available at the air-port. Also a special counter for tourists. 
My reaction: I am so going to love Taiwan!


Enter Taichung 
Mango and me finally meet the AIESEC-ers! We get a warm welcome from them and part ways.


Food
Their eating habits are way different from mine. They start with dessert, then eat their main course and then soup! So, its just the opposite fashion of what I am used too. I was only too happy to eat dessert first! Also they eat their meals much earlier then us, I am guessing that is because the sun rises at almost 5a.m. here.
So they eat their lunch at 12.30p.m. and dinner around 6.30 p.m. The food on the whole is extremely healthy and very tasty. They hardly use any "masalas" but everything has a distinctive flavour and aroma. I have been eating whatever vegetable and sea food put on my plate. Bamboo, tofu, rice, soup, fish/sea-food, meat is the staple meal for the well to do. And almost every second person seems to be well-to-do. That explains their high crime rate.


They love their tea. Herb tea or bubble tea they are sipping on it all the time. Thats also a post dinner ritual for them, considering they eat so early! I finally tasted hēi zhēnzhū nǎichá  thanks to Vicky- translated as black pearl milk tea, it is so yummy and soo addictive and apparently very fattening. More on "bubble tea" here.


Lots of posts coming up. Stay tuned.

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