End of the year

As it was written on the beginning of that famous Dickens book: It was the best of times, it was the worst of times..., this year was like that. Well, maybe not to exaggerate, but it has been a year of really high ups and some low downs. Nonetheless, after spending two weeks already in Barcelona, I am seeing things in a different way. More optimistical, with a different perspective and appreciating the good things that were, are and will be.

Such as warming up to the smile of two little candles that are just beginning to walk into this world, or to enjoy the conversation with an old friend around some coffee cups

Happy New Year and see you soon!

New Office

Yesterday, I spent my first full day in my new office in Shida. It is in the same building, but in the sixth floor. Why the change?. I was told that new people were coming and they ran out of space and had to reshuffle the office distribution. So, I had to go to an office where I will be able to stay for at least one year, and they can put two more girls in the office I was before. Why do it this way and not the other way around?. I did not want to ask, I was not in the mood. And maybe you wonder, what about in a year?. I do not know, they could not tell me, but I am not worrying about that. First, it remains to be seen if I will be here next year.

My first impressions of the office are not particularly positive, even if it has a similar disposition and it is placed in a similar place. But the view from the window is not so nice and I find it empty and cold. Of course, I have many good memories from the other office and it makes me sad to say goodbye —as I closed the door last Thursday, when I moved my stuff to the new office, I felt as if I was leaving behind a part of my life... I overdo it sometimes.

Mixed emotions in difficult days. Nothing new.

Frustration

That is the feeling that fills me now, at the end of this first week back in Taiwan. Not because bad things have happened, and there were even some good things, as small as they might be. But between the difficulties processing some personal matters and that almost nothing I tried to do at work worked out, I end up feeling a little too much powerless. Not to worry, these things happen, and I must watch out when I am far from my safe environment. They are not so important, but I feel a little bit angry.

At least, we had several sunny days, with warm blue skies, thanks to the typhoon that is going west between Taiwan and the Philippines, which is something that helps to keep the spirits up.

Post-docs

There is a new activity since last week to increase the interaction between post-docs at the ASIAA: postdoc tea every Wednesday. To drink something, eat some cookies and talk about something. I went there last week; not this one, it was raining and I was busy. And, after all, seeing what I have to do there, maybe it is best to save it for another moment.

All this post-doc stuff is very curious. I am not really used to it, because in my stay in the US, I only interacted inside our group, where we ended up being quite a number of people, but it was something different. Here, there are many post-docs in the institute. Most of them are either Taiwanese or Japanese, and then there are some exotic specimens like me: two or three indians, a canadian girl, and that's it.

Understandably, foreigners are prone to do more things together, because it is normal that Taiwanese post-docs have their own life here and/or other personal goals: they are the ones who will stay in the long run. The way in which everybody reacts to other internal or external issues is also different. People come and go, it is difficult to establish deeper friendships, often relationships are very superficial. I do not generally worry too much about it, but sometimes I can feel tired and disappointed: too much effort for apparently so little. That is the way life is, I guess, and it is ok. Besides, I am also used to look outside these circles for other people, something that my Barcelona experience imprinted in me.

Anyway, you can see why I did not go there today.

Reading again

I was going over my e-mail last Sunday when, for some reason I cannot remember, I started reading again, for a good while, messages from my family of the weeks before and after coming to Taiwan. It was not planned, I just found myself doing it; but it was interesting. To remember funny or good sentences of one or the other; or when they told me about the latest deed of the little one or how she was beginning to do her own things; insightful exchanges between my brothers; flat-out rants over any subject that inevitably made laugh, etc. I spent a long while laughing and smiling.

I also realized, reading what I had written, how much things change from the beginning and comparing to months later. There is a lot of uncertainty during the first days, everything is new, the personal mood is very variable. Little things sink you, others lift you up. A few months later, all is much more stable and you begin forgetting those feelings, and think that they never happened. The new reading of those messages helps me to see, as if I needed that, how well I feel right now.

Change of mind

A couple of weeks ago, I was again on my way from the Shida campus to Taipei, and I had just began the short and narrow part of Ting Choud Rd that goes along the field sports in campus. I had just walked by the small temple on the right-hand side of the road, when I looked at the facades of the buildings that line that side of the street, which are in fact the back side of the buildings that face Roosevelt Rd. It was a very beautiful day, with a sky almost completely blue, a dazzling Sun, but a nice temperature. And I thought that, even if they did not seem nice to me, they will be never be, those buildings have become part of a familiar cityscape, and I might even begin to feel a little bit of fondness for them.

Then I remembered the first impression that those same builidings, or some very similar ones, had on me the first day I arrived to Taipei, after that long trip, or when I started looking for an apartment under an almost constantly cloudy and/or rainy sky. In those moments when it can be said that your roots are exposed to the elements, when you still do not know where you will finally find a refuge —or as you might think in moments of doubt, if you ever find it—, when everything is new and different and there is no one around with whom to share some thoughts or someone who can give you some encouraging words, those buildings may seem, maybe only for a fleeting moment, like half- hideous and half-hateful symbols of everything you will never like. One is still probably comparing too much what is already known and what is in front of your eyes, which appears complicated and difficult to understand.

Change to some months later, completely settled, or as much as one can be, with a more or less reduced group of acquaintances, places that have become familiar and a whole new series of habits, and most of the negative undertones have vanished and all is simply another part of a land that is discovered little by little. It is a step more in the progressive change of impressions, as a result of daily experiences, the collection of memories, that shape the place where you are spending a substantial part of your life into another home to add to the list, maybe too short, you have been making as the years go by.

All of this is communicated to your mood. Everything feels very raw at the beginning. You discover new things every day, you are in the middle of many unknown situations, little details, small routines are transformed into very important almost vital matters. With time, all begins to blur, to soften. You find your place and become used to everything. It is then that, one somehow longs, maybe for years, for those primordial days when everything was new, when you were stepping on unknown ground and you felt as a brand new blackboard ready for lines to be written on it. But it is too difficult to stay in that state, unless you pack your bags again and move to the next place, which is something I do not plan on doing any time soon.

Faraway Eyes

Maybe it is just because of the cloudy sky, the nice temperature, and the soft but not too cold, not too warm breeze. Or maybe just because of an already forgotten dream from the previous night. There are some days, it is maybe the first one here, that make me think about the term Faraway eyes, as if my mind was wandering in a flight through far away skies over plains that extend as far as the horizon. Memories of similar moments, maybe in America, come back to me, and I feel wrapped up with a feeling of comfort and reunion. As if I was walking with somebody by my side all the time.

These are ideal days then to listen to some music of Steve Earle, or Marah, or from the record I cannot stop listening lately of Elliot Brood: a fair dose of melancholic songs, but very uplifting at the same time. Ah, a harmonica is a strict requirement.

Places you will never see again

These internet communications work in a very funny way. At small bursts. These last three or four days, I have been able to talk, through e-mail or some kind of chat, with several people I first met or found again in the US. I had not heard from them for several weeks, or months in some cases, and now all at the same time. It is always good to be updated on each others' lives and getting the latest news.

Maybe that is why I remembered a thought that crossed my mind a couple of weeks ago, and then I thought that it was coming really early. Put in a simple way: there comes a day, when you are like me in a faraway place from which you know you will leave relatively soon, that you look around, to the places that you walk by almost every day, and realize that you will leave one day and you will probably never see them again. Then, I usually feel a mix of nostalgia (of the future) and disbelief at the possibility of such a thing like that ever happening. I began having that feeling in Columbus maybe six or seven months before my stay would finish, that is why I was so surprised of thinking about it so soon.

That can also be applied to the people you meet, but that is a completely different story. There are more chances to see each other again, but, at the same time, distance can be harder too.

Don't worry, it was a fleeting thought that has not come back... yet.