(no subject)
Trying to stay up late to destabilize my sleep schedule for the trip back to the US... boy did I need these past 2 weeks of going-home-to-Taiwan. Even though work doesn't track vacation time for residents, it was still kind of an unreasonable amount of time to ask off for purely personal reasons, and I'm paying back the karma by having to miss Mystery Hunt this year (cried when I saw the supervisor's schedule - I'm more than half sure that he just forgot that I told him before I left since I neglected to remind him right before he made the schedule, but it's also possible that he just shafted me because all the other residents have variously requested time off all throughout the month and it was probably hell to put together a workable schedule and my thing was frivolous anyway)
But seriously, these two weeks were exactly what I was hoping to receive *after* the residency, just early - time to put this whole veterinary pathology lark right out of my mind and simply concentrate on remembering who the hell I am under all this studying and fretting and conflating-my-identity-with-my-work. Who am I as a person, as a human being? Remembering that I am my parents' daughter and Doris's sister, remembering I'm an NEHSer and reconnecting with friends... and I had resolved to practice living more "in the moment", trying to be more present and active and saying yes to more things and basically all these things that really, really don't come naturally to me. I'd resolved not to pick up a book while I was home, but I did end up semi-inadvertently rereading the entirety of Harry Potter and the Nightmares of Future Past in the last couple of days, and I've found that I just can't watch movies with my full attention anymore... but on the whole I guess it was fairly successful. Now we'll see if any of this will stick when I get back...
Basically, to steal a phrase from Kim Smith, "the chronicles of recovering focus". Or from my paternal grandpa on this trip back, "平常心" - as in, no matter what the circumstances, dealing with them with your usual manner (kind of like being true to yourself and also kinda unflappable). Or, from myself a while back - I should've died a couple of years ago anyway, so this is my mulligan. I'm stealing phrases and wearing them like borrowed armor till hopefully they sink in one day and become habit... at one point in the past half-year I felt like mentally, I was walking on a balance beam right alongside the veil between life and death, trailing my fingers along the gauzy cloth, and it would be so easy to fall off the beam in one direction (death) or the other (an unknown plummet with the prospect of broken bones or worse at the bottom)... and now it's like I stepped off the beam, I'm straddling it with both feet firmly planted in the grass just a foot below and it's so strange to have all this ground all around instead of a narrow plank of wood. (To mix metaphors, like being on a rocking ship for a long time and then standing on dry land and feeling the ground seethe all around.) And I'm so afraid that I'm going to end back up on that beam (like touching the third rail) and at the moment it's just kind of an awkward waddle but as long as I keep going forward through the grass and making my own path, hopefully eventually it'll become natural and I'll have the whole prairie to wander... 退一步 海闊天空. (But even if people *say* that to you, it just doesn't work until it truly sinks in, you have to arrive at the epiphany yourself...)
It took me 27 years to finally grow into a human being instead of a stunted bookworm, heh. I guess I have this goddamn residency to thank... growth only comes at the expense of discomfort. But once it's over I'd like to just find a comfortable living thank you very much.
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Cliffsnotes (during a couple hours layover in Narita 1/4):
12/20: leave Kansas
12/22: arrive in TW at 5 AM, chill in the Taipei apartment and get over jet lag, Mom takes me shopping in a mall in the afternoon (her favorite thing to do). My cousin Amy is in the house too, she's been staying with my parents as she goes to med school to get a Ph.D in occupational therapy.
12/23: Doris arrives, also at 5 AM. I'm working on that goddamn One Health presentation, last-minute scriptwriting heh. We get haircuts (badly needed, in my case) too. Doris starts teaching me how to knit, and I get started on a scarf for Albert.
12/24: Go to NTU and give my presentation to the vet faculty and students, about 15 or so of them altogether. (Doris accompanies me as photographer, I convince mom and dad that their presence would hurt more than it would help.) 1.5 months of work goes POOF and I get a new line in my resume. And now that's no longer hanging over my head hah. (... I'm noticing my negative attitudes more and more and yet how else can I be?) And then Mom and Doris and I 逛街 around the area but Doris and I are still jetlagged so we go home and crash lol.
12/25: Make a fleeting visit to Albert's dad in Beitou, then go down to Hsinchu and run a bunch of errands, Doris starts baking up a storm for her classmates+their parents' get-together potluck the next day.
12/26: I duck out of the potluck to go downtown and go shopping all afternoon, hah. And then that evening we head down to Tainan to my maternal grandparents' place. Mom drives me and Doris, Dad takes the high-speed rail.
12/27: Family trip to Chimei Museum. Dad keeps trying to get Doris to look at the classical art, but she's more interested in the modern stuff lol. There's a "natural history" exhibit with dioramas of taxidermied animals, and the family is like "oh yeah you can explain everything to us!" and I'm like "whut no lol"... it's not practical to differentiate between, say, all the members of the antelope family, you just go "well it's an antelope-type and it's kind of like a cow" and extrapolate from what you know because usually there's not enough research on each individual species anyway.
12/28: Extravagant fresh seafood lunch with the maternal relatives - grandma, big uncle, little uncle + aunt, and us. Buy Tainan seafood for paternal relatives for tomorrow. Visit Grandpa's ashes - Doris went back for the funeral this summer but hadn't gone to the columbarium where they eventually placed him because it was "bad luck" or somesuch. Very interesting cultural experience.
12/29: Go to Taichung to visit paternal relatives - eat lunch and chill for a bit in their apartment, then head back to Hsinchu.
12/30: NEHS alumni panel - first one I've ever actually participated in. Adrenaline rush due to being an introvert talking in front of lots and lots of people lol. Plus I didn't know any of the alumni except Marina, and I guess kind of Winnie (Sheu? Winnie-and-Maggie Winnie from the year below us). It's really weird how NEHS is receding into the distant past for me... the kids are getting younger and younger every year (technically I have coworkers/pathologists with kids that age - lol at one point later "The Lion King" came on TV and Doris was commenting about how now she thinks Simba was such an awful reckless brat and was feeling sorry for Zazu, and I was like yeah, you know you're getting old when you sympathize with the grownups instead of the kids......) and they've done so much construction - the new buildings are almost (but not quite) finished and it's like they built a whole 'nother campus behind the original campus (on top of all the graves behind the school that they dug up lol). Winnie mentioned that it was really nice to be able to talk about how the school used to be "back in her day" to people who *got* it - when she talks like that to the current students, they just stare at her blankly 'cause they don't *know*. lol. And then back to Taipei in the evening. Doris had baked a pineapple upsidedown cake for Amy because it was her birthday so we all had cake.
12/31: Went to Ximending to get my manga fix, which took like half the afternoon lol... then in the evening went to a restaurant near Taipei 101 to meet up with Brian and his coworkers/friends/their friends (well more like 2 people he knew and then a dozen strangers, mostly NTU grad students), and then I got a call from a very panicked Doris that Simba was blocked (she knew the symptoms from last year when he did the same thing) and so I had to cut things short and go home to help her... Mom and Dad were in Hsinchu attending a 跨年 party at Mom's coworker's place and they weren't answering their phones till after this was over lol. I admit I wasn't too sad about that turn of events because 1. I didn't know anybody other than Brian and I'd already caught up well enough with him that evening, 2. they were all going to a bar to drink later and I was game but it's still not really my scene, and 3. I didn't get caught in the horrendous crush when the crowd dispersed after midnight.
1/1: Chilled and monitored the cat all day (Doris was still low-grade freaking out lol) and then went to dinner with Joyce, Bonnie, and Brian in the evening. Oh yeah, so Brian is working for a law firm based near Taipei 101, doing Chinese/English translation work and drawing up contracts and such (since he's not licensed/barred/whatever the lawyery thing is to practice in Taiwan, he's only been here since May). Bonnie finished med school in Stanford and is now in Boston starting an orthopedic surgery residency (6 months into a 5-year program, plus another year of fellowship afterwards to specialize in a particular body part apparently). Joyce is working as an accountant in a marketing company somewhere also in downtown Taipei. Bonnie barely remembered Brian because she left for TAS in 4th grade and he had just arrived in 3rd grade - man, I pretty much don't remember when people left, just sort of generically "in elementary or middle or high school" heh. But it was so awesome that the NEHS bond still holds - it was so easy to talk and reconnect. And they all admitted that they also don't really keep in touch with other NEHSers too, so it's not just me lol... guess that's what 10-year reunions are for >_>;;;; heh
1/2: Packed during the day, and went to dinner with Albert's dad, Albert's brother Benjamin who was visiting him for a week, and Albert's dad's girlfriend's daughter who's working in Taipei as a production assistant for some film company that mostly seems to produce advertising/political ad/informational spots. Thankfully not too awkward.
1/3: Doris went to lunch with her friends, and Mom and I went MORE shopping in downtown Taipei (dragging Dad with us as our packmule lol). Then came back, packed, and tried to stay up late to get a jumpstart on reverting my jet lag - Albert bought us movie tickets to the new Star Wars movie in Kansas City as soon as I get off the plane lol, and boy am I glad I also asked for Tuesday off because oh wait no nevermind, I thought I was scheduled for Wednesday necropsy duty but actually it's Thursday and Friday instead. Still, gotta show up for work on Wednesday (and give out all the gifts - trinkets/bribes heh - I bought for the department)...
And I'm heavily intending on coming back to Taiwan right after boards so it'll just be another 1.5 years and then I'll have something to look forward to after the boards exam. Just need to maintain this grip on myself as a whole person, still do good work at work, and now I have a better idea on study planning so hopefully things should turn out all right.........
Oh yeah, the weird thing about this trip back was how *normal* it all felt. Like, I didn't feel super different coming back, and I don't feel super different leaving - it's just a continuation of my life, no super high or super low. 平常心. It's like, I *could* wallow and make a big deal out of it if I wanted to, but it doesn't *have* to be like that. I wonder if it's part of finding that 平常心, that stable core of myself, and the confidence that whatever happens happens and I'll deal with it instead of freaking myself out by thinking too far ahead with what-ifs... and partly because I totally intend on coming back within a defined time so it's not like a feeling of goodbye forever...
Edit:
Ok now I'm home (having watched the new Star Wars movie with Albert after he picked me up in Kansas City, as we had planned) and I guess the plane flight is kind of like a transition period... like, I've spent the last 2 weeks walking in the rhythm of Taiwan, and now I have to readjust to being who I am in America (an independent adult, mostly, versus my parents' kid in Taiwan) and I guess there's a bit of a twinge of regret/sadness/worry during the roleshift, like killing the potential self who stayed in Taiwan and having to take up the role that I dropped during this time, having to pick up all that stuff and hit the ground running again... that's the thing about changing plans/expectations, I don't do it well, I like things predictable and within-expectations.
But here's Albert, and Cat, and while the prospect of coming back to the apartment (home of bad memories/emotions) was daunting from the outside, once I'm back in it's not so bad... and while I never make New Year's Resolutions, this epiphany/mindshift feels like one, and maybe making it an explicit resolution will help me stick to it - I resolve to be an actual complete human being from now on, or at least try until hopefully it sticks.