Disinfection by Inaction

During our volunteer years in Taiwan in the 1970s, we lived in places that had been put up in the 1960s. Their condition of construction and repair reflected standards of the time and the wear and tear that came from being student dormitories. When we returned in 1982 to take up permanent residence in Kaohsiung, we moved into a place that had been put up less than ten years previously. Even so, ants were a problem.  

After a sabbatical in the late 80s, we went up and back, to a higher class place that had a “late 60s luxury vibe”.  We were in that building until 2007, after which we moved further into the past but to more space in faculty housing on the campus of Tainan Theological College.  We spent 11 years in that house, and enjoyed each of them, but had to always be conscious of ants, which seemed to emerge through cracks in the floor. 

Photo by Gabriel Gabriel on Unsplash

We’ve hardly seen an ant since we left Taiwan at the end of July 2018. This is especially good now that our groceries, delivered from the supermarket, spend up to 72 hours on the porch before we bring them in.  Had this been our practice in Tainan, we’d have brought in more ants than groceries. 

That being said, though, I think I’d trade those ants for this “stay at home” life. 

David Alexander now resides in Holland, MI after 39 years in Taiwan.

Birdsong and Squirrel Chatter

Our initial introduction to residential life on the campus of Tainan Theological College came in July of 2008. We’d been on sabbatical in the USA for the 10 months prior, experiencing all four seasons of life in Michigan. We left when summer had hardly begun, and arrived in Tainan two days later to the blast of tropical humidity. It wasn’t unexpected. Several times over the previous 3 decades we had arrived during the summer, either after a long sabbatical or a month’s vacation. What we WEREN’T prepared for, though (having previously lived in the center of Kaohsiung City) was the birdsong. 

 

Our first several days on campus, before our house was ready and our furniture delivered, were spent in the college’s guest house. It was then in a building at a far end of campus, flanked by a tall Banyan and a couple of mature Mango trees. The birds in those trees were only a few feet from the window of the room where we slept. At sunrise they loudly announced the new day.  Within a few months we came to distinguish birdsong from squirrel noises, which were also loud and frequent. 

 

As we continued to reside in Tainan, we became familiar with the flora and fauna of the campus. Trees were conveniently labeled with signs for wandering botanists. Birds and squirrels were unlabeled, though. The only sound we recognized was the rooster in Dr. Chan’s yard. 

 

Compared to Holland, MI, Tainan is noisy. Compared to the beautiful occasional birdsong of Michigan, Taiwan sounded like a Tarzan movie.  Comfortably situated in Michigan now, we listen to the songs in the spring air, and reminisce about home.    

 

David Alexander now resides in Holland, MI after 39 years in Taiwan.

Through the Window and Into Memory

Locked in place by the current plague, I spend lots of time in a chair near a window that looks out onto the street.  The street itself comes to a dead end about 75 meters from the house, so there is no through traffic, especially not large vehicles that have trouble turning about at the end of the block. But on a recent day I heard a mighty diesel engine roar, and beheld a behemoth laden with an empty dumpster going past.  Some moments later, it returned, unladen, to other errands.

Apparently a recently vacated residence across the street is scheduled for remodeling, perhaps a new roof, in coming days. Daily dumpster rental fees in this town is not cheap, so I figure that the work will begin soon, but I’m just guessing.  This use of dumpsters, the smaller of which can contain 10 cubic yards, the largest up to 30 cubic yards of construction debris is something I don’t remember seeing near construction sites in Taiwan.

In 1982 we rented a flat on a narrow lane off of Tze-Chiang Road in Kaohsiung’s Lin-ya District. It was our first home in Taiwan, and we stayed there until 1985.  At least twice during those years, 5-floor buildings were put up along that lane. Each construction project was preceded by the removal of whatever had previously occupied the space. Each previous structure had been  brick with a tile roof. Preparation for whatever was to come next required excavation for a foundation. The old building and the excavated soil were unceremoniously deposited in the lane, making passage from one end to the other impossible. Happily, this lane opened on streets at both ends, allowing people to get where they were going by circumnavigating the block. 

In the 80s, cement mixer trucks, though common in Taipei and its environs, were not yet part of how things were done in Kaohsiung.  A pile of sand, a dumptruck load of bricks and a pallet of portland cement in bags got things started. These were renewed as needed. Cement mixers were rolled in. Wheelbarrows appeared and scaffolds with a winch were erected to get materials up to where they were used. Mixing began and buildings sprouted upwards. The lane remained partially or fully blocked throughout construction.

Things are wider here. The dumpster will eliminate the sight of broken or discarded bits of the house to be remodeled and its placement back near the garage will obviate our need to go around it. That is an advantage. What we’ll have lost, though, is the experience of watching what goes on.

So much of life in Taiwan then, and even now, is right out where it can be seen. There’s much more to talk about there. 

David Alexander now resides in Holland, MI after 39 years in Taiwan. 

There is Cheap, but no Inexpensive Beer in Taiwan

There’s a saying in Taiwanese, “cheap things are not good stuff, and good stuff has no cheap things.”  In some situations, even cheap stuff can be costly. Sometimes low prices just don’t exist. That’s true when you shop for beer in Taiwan. 

Last week I finished the final bottle of home-brew from the basement. The brew store being at a distance from our home, I haven’t even asked if it’s an essential business in this time of plague. Happily, though, liquor stores have been deemed essential in Michigan. While ordering online take-out from a local restaurant I noticed a large store that offers delivery through the same contractors who bring burritos and such. I wandered over there (online) and began looking for bargains.

You’d think that Corona beer would be on sale, but it’s not. Though the bottom may have dropped out of its market, the price hasn’t budged a penny. I couldn’t find anything less expensive than PBR, so that’s what I ordered.  Compared to the other stuff on offer, it was inexpensive, and, as you might expect, it also tastes fairly cheap. 

Buying beer in Taiwan is simpler. Even with the many imported brands available, and the increased number of private brewing companies competing with Taiwan Beer, there’s still nowhere near the selection that one finds here. Taiwan Beer, though refreshing, is a fairly ordinary industrial product.  Every few years the company brings out a different variety for a season or so, but doesn’t continue these for very long. What they all share is a similar price point, about 32 Taiwan Dollars for a 15 ounce can, and 45 for a “tall”. Compared to PBR, it’s similarly cheap beer, but it’s not inexpensive. 

David Alexander now resides in Holland, MI after 39 years in Taiwan.

A Shining Star in the Car Repair Constellation

During my initial couple years in Taiwan in the 70s, a bicycle was adequate transportation.  Returning in 1982 as half of a couple (she had also spent a year or so in Taiwan in the 70s) we were once again on bikes. This continued until 1990.  When you’re on a bicycle, the most urgent repairs include punctures or broken chains. Repair shops then were as common as 7-Eleven stores now.

In 1990 we acquired a car. Cars have more parts than bicycles, and more things can go wrong. It wasn’t long before we learned of the constellation of repair shops, oil change places, filling stations and parts stores. While we continued in Kaohsiung, we went through 3 cars (long story, not a cheerful one). Each had unique repair or service needs. We went from dealers to large repair places to “a guy introduced to us by some friends.” Not long after we relocated to Tainan something went wrong that needed immediate attention. I’d remembered a place a couple blocks from where we resided, so drove there post-haste. It was closed. I continued along the side street and saw another, into which I turned. 

The boss came out. I told him what was wrong. He went to the parts room, came out with something smaller than a button and replaced whatever had broken down by the brake pedal.   A ten-year relationship began. We got to know each other. I recognized his wife’s voice on the phone when she would call with a diagnosis and estimate for repairs. When we gave the car away on departure, I introduced its new owner to the shop where they knew what to do with the thing.  Everyone was in good hands.

When we went home to vote in January’s election, one of my stops was that shop. I went in just to say hello. They’re doing well. Should I take up residence in Taiwan ever again, no matter how far from Tainan I should dwell, I’ll take whatever I drive to them for care. 

David Alexander now resides in Holland, MI after 39 years in Taiwan.

Ramadan Mubarak

Photo by Naassom Azevedo on Unsplash

Rusting to Dust

From the year 2000 to 2004, though I resided in Kaohsiung and my main job was in Tainan, I was “on call” for work in Taipei. One summer I went there every Thursday morning and returned home at about midnight on Friday. Because I was unfamiliar with Taipei, I spent most of my nights away nights in little hotels on back lanes near the center of town. Evenings in a hotel room can be rather boring, so I’d often wander around. In many places I found shells of former houses that appeared to date back to the immediate post-war years. The thickness of the trees growing out of former floors through former roofs testified to how long it had been since these had been occupied. 

The house next to my current residence in Michigan is also nobody’s home. An artist who lives with his wife a few blocks away uses it as a studio. Apparently nobody has lived there for over a decade. But, because this town prides itself on appearances, and because the artist is no dummy, the paint is fresh, the lawns are mowed, and the snow gets shoveled. This contrasts greatly with those house shells in Taipei.  They are more like the Alfa Romeo rusting to dust in Tainan.

(Image by Husky Kuma from Pixabay)

The “north campus” at Tainan Theological College (across a narrow lane from the “south campus”) hosts faculty housing, the library, the women’s dormitory and the Sin-lau Kindergarten. It has gates on Chin-nien Road and Sin-lau Street. There’s also a side gate that opens onto a lane leading to Chien-fong Road. That lane dead ends just beyond that gate, ending in a scrap of private property over which someone has built a roof under which sits an Alfa Romeo sedan of 1990s vintage.  Befitting an Alfa, the car was once bright red. When we took up residence on the college campus in 2008 it was moderately dust covered. If a cat walked across it, one could see the tracks. By the time we left in 2018, the dust had hardened like plaster and the car itself sat lower to the ground because the tires had gone very, very flat. (The car was still there in 2020.) 

 

A friend once told me of one reason for empty house shells. A surfeit of heirs had come into portions of possession, and one or more of them, in dispute with others, refused to sign off on a sale. It makes me wonder about the Alfa Romeo. Does it belong to too many people? Is it someone’s prize possession, being held onto until its value comes back up? Is it awaiting restoration? Or has it just fallen between owners and the motor vehicle authorities haven’t yet seized it for non-payment of registration?  

 

In these days of plague, my wife and I are probably not the only ones updating a will.

 

David Alexander now resides in Holland, MI after 39 years in Taiwan.

Tulips Outside of Time, Time

At a store in Tainan about 5 years ago I found myself with time to read a poster near the ATM where I was making a withdrawal.  The announcement thereon was about an upcoming “shopping festival” in the city. I found this amusing because, being a Tainan resident for several years by that time, I found every day to be a shopping festival.

Photo by Joyce Romero on Unsplash

When I was a child in Los Angeles, my mother listened to the radio in the house and in the car almost incessantly. Some of the jingles on the commercials remain with me to this day, 60-odd years later.  ♬ Ev-er-y-day’s a special day at Thriftimart!♬ As a child, I didn’t realize that the song meant there were special deals every day, I merely assumed that whenever you went there it would feel special.

                                                                                                    Photo by Sharon Klek on Pinterest

The plague we’re in, with its attendant stay-at-home conditions, has meant the cancellation of many current and upcoming events.  Sports just aren’t happening in the USA, and professional baseball in Taiwan is being played in stadia empty of all but teams and broadcasters. Here in Holland, we’ve received news that our season tickets to the summer repertory theatre season are cancelled for 2020, but we’ll get tickets for 2021.  Even Holland’s premier annual cultural festival, Tulip Time, has been cancelled. 

But nobody told the tulips.  The bulbs were put into the ground last November. Along the streets that will become Tulip Lanes, they’ve sprouted and the leaves are lush. Stems arise, and we recently saw our first blossoms. 2019’s investment will bring no dollars back to the Tulip Time Corporation in 2020 from which to fund 2021’s festival. The beauty and benefit will be for local residents and such people as come by car (even the daily train has been suspended) to look at the colors while maintaining proper social distance. 

Photo by  BazookaJoe CC BY-SA 3.0,

As it is said  in Cleveland, “There’ll always be next year.”

David Alexander resides in Holland, MI after 39 years in Taiwan.

Old Bricks

When we moved from Kaohsiung to Tainan in 2007, we took up residence on the campus of Tainan Theological College in a house that had been around since the 1960s. Other buildings on campus went back to the early 20th century, and a few were put up as recently as the early 90s. What characterized all the buildings, though, was the presence of loose bricks here and there next to walls and in corners.  It seems that old buildings just sort of collect loose bricks which often come in handy.

When we retired from Taiwan and took up the retired life in Holland, MI in 2018, we purchased an older home… quite a bit older. It was first occupied in 1925.  Having been here so long, and had so many different owners and tenants over the decades, the house, garage and yard came ready-equipped with loose bricks. From time to time in the year or so that we’ve lived here, I’ve found use for a brick here, and a brick there. So I’ve counted myself fortunate to have a supply on hand.

Photo by Divide By Zero on Unsplash

Being under government (and spousal) ordered lockdown, I’ve recently become tired of using the time to write blog posts. Today I dedicated part of the morning to physical labor, clearing out branches and sticks at the back of the lot, moving random piles of junk that I found there, and getting all loose bricks into a single space. Out in the garage, there were a dozen previously unused bricks stacked 2 or 3 deep along one wall. I could well have left them, because their collection required getting onto my knees and reaching under a shelf. But I concluded that having decided to gather things into a single place, to leave any bricks in another was cheating. This led to a couple of discoveries, and to a new project.

First, the bottom layer of these bricks was not held there by gravity, but by some kind of glue not intended for the purpose (so it crumbled away easily). Second, the glued bricks covered the board that sits atop the garage foundation, to which the wall is attached. Under them, the board has mostly rotted away. I’ll have to learn what to do about that, borrow the tools, and get back down on my knees after the lockdown is over. 

Life can be like an old house. We gather bits and pieces along the way, some are used to build, some are held in reserve, and others cover up the rot underneath. Looking over my life, I’m going to be more careful about moving bricks.

David Alexander now resides in Holland, MI after 39 years in Taiwan.

Crazy Magnets

A 2013 article in Psychological Medicine reported the conclusion of a study showing that persons involved in “caring personal service” occupations showed more common mental disorders than people in other lines of work. (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3615626/#).  It’s not hard to list “caring personal service” occupations: Nurses, Therapists, Physicians, Counselors, even Clergy fit in.  No occupation shields a practitioner from mental illness. During my decades of missionary service in Taiwan, I saw it in some colleagues. I don’t doubt that it was seen in me.

Today I reflect on something I heard from friends in similar service; the phenomenon of us as “crazy magnets”.   Between 1995 and 1999 I worked to start a new church in the Kaohsiung neighborhood of Lin-ya-liao. I failed. My job was assigned by a local Presbytery (district) of the Presbyterian Church in Taiwan. Apart from my salary, all support for the project came from within Taiwan. 

During those years I talked with foreign friends doing similar projects around town. One man ventured that he spent 80% of his time on 20% of the people who had been attracted to what he was trying to do. On further discussion, he mentioned that his “new church” had only a handful of adherents, one of whom regarded his “foreign missionary” as a full-time on-call friend. Across my   4-year pursuit to set up a storefront operation, I noticed that more and more people with social adjustment or mental health problems found their way into my orbit. Listening to some of these precious people, I’d hear about earlier, sometimes YEARS earlier, associations with foreign missionaries. More than once I’d field what sounded like a sincere “faith question”. But my responses were rarely accepted. I’d be met with a contrary opinion, delivered as being the very word heard previously from someone else.  I fell for the bait all too often.

My project ended in (mercifully) 1999. After a year of sabbatical I was reassigned to a publishing house in Tainan. I commuted by train. On one trip I sat with Wu Hsin-an, who had been the director of Kaohsiung’s Lifeline (suicide prevention call-in center) for decades. As the train passed Long-fa-tang (龍發堂), a folk-religion temple that offers treatment to the mentally ill, I asked Mr. Wu to comment on my “foreign missionaries as crazy magnets” hypothesis. He confirmed it. Asking “why?”, I was told that “you’re perceived as friendlier than Taiwanese clergy.” 

I don’t know if I was friendlier, but I sense that I was more desperate, naive, and perhaps deluded. Maybe my own craziness is what attracted people.

David Alexander now resides in Holland, MI after 39 years in Taiwan.