MONDAY, 21 JUNE 1999
Maybe I wasn’t made for foreign countries. Maybe I was destined to just be a regular guy who voted for the government and maintained a clean credit record. And who thought the new shopping mall was the greatest thing since lawnmowers. Instead, I’m sitting here in Chiang Kai-shek’s China, and I think it’s okay to eat dumplings on a Sunday night instead of leftover barbecue and potato salad. I pretend it’s a great job to watch children colour pictures of Mickey Mouse, while I ask them one by one, “What colour is this?” And then I pretend to get excited when they say “Yellow!” when it’s actually purple.
[…]
Steppenwolf. I’m still upset with the woman who absconded with my copy of [Hermann Hesse’s] Steppenwolf in Korea. I read it so carefully and underlined all the parts that were relevant to me. I thought, this was me, this Steppenwolf, the loner who thinks everyone who hangs out at bars and who tries to enjoy life is superficial.
[…]
I am tired of being alone. I don’t like to think of this actually, but what if I die, here in Taiwan? I live as if I have a million years to love people! As if all of this can wait until the whole of Asia’s children can speak fluent English!
Does it sound like I’m a little down in the dumps? Well, I once again had dumplings tonight. There are alternatives, but I can’t find barbecue and potato salad anywhere. So, whether it’s pizza, McDonald’s, or dumplings, it’s all the same.
I don’t belong here/in this land of strange words and sounds/I don’t belong here/in this land where I’m a stranger/so much to live for/so much to feel/so much yet to know …
* * *
Monday brought clarity. I can’t go back to South Africa because I’d be broke within a few months.
[…]
No, this second exile will last for three years, I decided. I will pay off my debt, buy myself some more electronics, and go to Europe next year.
* * *
I am a bit worried about myself. I have no motivation to do anything. I just want to spend the whole day in front of the TV and think of nothing. I don’t want to think about money, or how to make money. I don’t even want to think of the book I want to write.
[…]
[I had become a big escapist by my final year of high school.] I hated my immediate environment, but rather than making the best of it, I dreamed of better places. Or at least other places.
Maybe it was necessary, otherwise my life might have been robbed of the little adventure that I have been fortunate enough to experience. Hell, if I think about it, if I had been happy in Pretoria all those years ago [in 1991], I’d probably have been married by now, living in a house somewhere in the suburbs! I would have been cosying up to my wife right about now – or at least this time of the night – with my hand gently resting on her one breast. And tomorrow morning I would have gotten into my car, and with a mixture of morning traffic and light pop music in my ears I would have driven to some office building for my daily labour. Would I have been happy? Who knows. I would probably have felt that I belonged somewhere, and I would certainly still have dreamed. About what – I can’t say.
But now I’m sitting here in the Republic of Chiang. It’s three o’clock in the morning (Tuesday, this time), and I am trying to get my life in order on the computer I bought cash last week. Behind me, on the TV, images flash of a movie from Hong Kong. I have to go to sleep because although my first class only starts at four-thirty tomorrow afternoon, I want to get breakfast at McDonald’s. And they only serve breakfast until eleven o’clock.
* * *
Saturday, 26 June, just after lunch (I say with a spoonful of cereal in my mouth). I can’t go back to South Africa next year. I won’t have enough money, and faith alone will once again not be enough.
[…]
Money is the bottom-line. If I had enough money, the plan is good. If I don’t have enough money, and just a lot of faith and hope, the great disillusionment would always lurk on the horizon.
No, let’s be very serious about this. Once my debt is paid off, and I have enough money for at least one year of full-time study, fair and well. If not, it’s just not good enough. I’m sorry, but even the stupidest donkeys only hit their toes against the same stone so many times.
(Sunday, 20 June to Saturday, 26 June 1999)
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