Assorted Notes

WEDNESDAY, 10 SEPTEMBER 2003

People, myself included, are too serious. Take the whole story of having to move to another flat. You live in a place for almost five years, and then you get a call one night. The owner informs you they want to sell the apartment, and you should have been out yesterday. You feel a little anxious about the place that will soon be your new home, about your new surroundings, new roads you’d have to explore. What I want to suggest here is that this issue, like so many others in life, does not justify nearly so much seriousness.

That was the first remark. The second point is that the first point is a load of crap. I mean, some things are never as bad as you initially imagined they would be, but if you have to be honest, you’d have to admit that life is a fairly serious business. If you laugh at every second thing that happens to you, or at every third person who crosses your path, you will definitely see your ass.

* * *

Life is no joke, but outside the great truths like “Doughnuts make you fat” and “The earth is round” few things are as true as that you can forget about surviving in this world without a good sense of humour.

To laugh at things that are “not really funny” also subverts our calculations. Is one plus one not two? And if that is the case, then we’re not supposed to laugh at three-quarters of the things we laugh at, right? Yet this is exactly what we do, and on the cosmic calculator this is exactly what enables us to go on living despite what circumstances sometimes dictate.

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SATURDAY, 6 SEPTEMBER 2003

I was sitting in my new apartment, and after going through the usual process of where I was going to put the couch, and where I was going to hang freshly laundered sheets, I received what could be described as my first serious thought in the new place – a reminder that these were not the most important issues at this time of my life. And perhaps it was not surprising that I also thought of the two words that now dominate my mind at all times of the day: “long-term” and “business”.

It was at that point I came up with the question of whether the issue of repatriation should necessarily be bundled with the issue of long-term income – that is, just because I’m talking about long-term income, does that necessarily mean I have to go back to South Africa? After I stubbed out my cigarette on a wet piece of toilet paper, I answered the question as follows: Considerations about going back to South Africa must include considering long-term income in South Africa. These two things are intertwined because I cannot go back to South Africa without ways of ensuring a long-term income.

[…]

Sensitive to not boring anyone with long reports, I just want to say that I reminded myself it’s not about how much money I take back to South Africa anymore. It is about how prepared I am to be a businessman; to start earning money in South African currency as soon as possible after I walked out of a Spar with my first bottle of garlic sauce and I realised the notes that had disappeared from my wallet would not be replaced within a month with Taiwanese money.

[…]

I’m working hard these days on ideas through which I can transform myself from an amateur philosopher and poet into a hard-boiled capitalist. I remain convinced that BUSINESS is the answer to my search for creative independence, and the key to a more meaningful life.

I would also like at some point to replace my current roles and identities … or rather, to upgrade to the role and associated identity of Family Man. And I’d be able to do it so much better, according to my own principles and beliefs, if I can achieve financial independence without having to call another man or woman “Boss”. (By the way, a note to all my working comrades in the so-called Real World: Don’t be deceived by the contemporary trend in corporate culture where workers are allowed to call their bosses by their first names. It’s a trick! He – or she – is still your BOSS!)

So, BUSINESS continues – especially now that I’m no longer plagued on a daily basis by the four-year-olds from my recently vacated job as a kindergarten teacher, and likewise my plans to return home early next year.

There is, however, the interesting question I asked myself this afternoon: Does it necessarily mean that I should go back to South Africa if I can launch business projects here in Taiwan that guarantee long-term income? There is also the open question of the impact the new apartment will have on my mind and on my experience of Taiwan.

“New apartment?” you might be wondering by now.

Yes, it is true that I am going to pack my boxes and bags over the next three weeks and strip my pictures, posters and calendars off the walls. I also plan to wrap in newspaper the framed piece of calligraphy that has been hanging in my current apartment for years, and to load that together with the suitcases and boxes, my washing machine, my bed and my bicycle into a taxi on the 27th of September.

The destination will however not be the airport, as my own mythology has always prophesied, but another apartment, deep in the Taiwanese area of the city (very few white faces, or foreigners of any other colour dare live so far from a 7-Eleven or a McDonald’s).

The reason for the sudden change of view I will enjoy from my dresser is that the owner of my current apartment suddenly decided the dark structure in which I’ve been sheltering the past almost five years somehow qualifies to be sold on the open market.

Thus, the end of my life in Lane 55 Number 15 is officially coming to a close. And this time it’s not just my own whimsical and implausible predictions that I will roll up my bedding and start walking. It is really happening.

Maybe it will be a good test run. Maybe I won’t even unpack my boxes in the new apartment. Maybe I’ll just throw my mattress on the living room floor, and from sheer wilfulness wash in the kitchen. Maybe I will make myself deliberately so miserable that I’ll be fleeing the country before the end of the year.

But wait a minute … If I sleep in the living room and cook soup in the spare room on a gas stove, I will likely forget to shave, too. Which means I will start looking so bad that I will probably be asked not to show my face at work anymore. Which means I can spend all day between crumpled bedding on my mattress writing poetry! I’ll eat beans from a can while watching the sun go down – in the distance, where other people live who also sometimes talk of going home. Then, when the sun has set, I will pull my fingers through my bushy beard, put the empty can on the windowsill with all the other empty cans, and in the half-light feel around for my box of green tea on the living room floor.

So many houses, so many stories. So much time, so many possibilities. So many dreams, so much hope. So much that I will never achieve. So much beauty in life that can only be viewed from afar.

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SATURDAY, 30 AUGUST 2003

Everyone makes mistakes, no matter how hard we try to accommodate each other. Frustration was nevertheless to be expected when the lady at the deep-fried stall earlier this evening failed to grasp what the hell I meant when I asked her the price, in Chinese, of a tofu kebab.

My Chinese is far from fluent, but I manage to express myself adequately on a daily basis in diverse situations. I can converse about this and that with colleagues at work; I can discuss new schedules with a school principal, and I can make small talk and crack jokes with six-year-olds for half a period (in Chinese, when I’m actually paid to speak English). “How much does it cost?” is a phrase that foreigners usually master in their first week in Taiwan. To not be understood after a few years when you use a phrase that at least you had thought you had mastered is disturbing for the serious language student.

My pronunciation of “How much is this thing?” was, like most of my Chinese, probably not one hundred percent accurate. But what other information can one possibly be inquiring about from the woman when you pick up the skewer with little squares of tofu stuffed in a row and inquisitively utter “woof, woof” in her direction? To say an amount should, in my opinion, have been an immediate reaction to any sounds that flowed from the general direction of my face! But instead of replying with a price she declared that she did not understand me.

Figuring that she might not have expected any sounds from their regular and usually mute foreign customer, and that she was possibly overcome with anxiety because she had thought she had to speak English, I repeated myself, slower this time. Again she smiled as if I were an imbecile, and asked the older lady next to her who was throwing food into the boiling oil, “Auntie, the foreign guy has never said a word, but now he’s speaking. What’s he saying?”

I tried again. And once again she could not figure out that I was not asking her for a lecture on the history of greasy food in Northeast Asia, but merely inquiring about the price of the damned tofu kebabs. When she looked at me for the third time with a well-intentioned but unhelpful smile, my own oil started getting hot enough to scorch the kebab there and then on the street.

I thought grabbing a coin out of my pocket might help, but I only managed to throw my keys in the bowl of amputated chicken feet.

Furious, and embarrassed at the same time, I triumphantly held out a coin, moments later. “Qian qian! Duo shao qian?!” I again pleaded in frustration.

The older lady turned away for a moment from another customer’s bacon-and-sausage kebab frying away in the boiling oil and translated my effort as “Duo shao qian?” in her native dialect, or “How much money?”.

“Thirty,” the younger woman indicated with three fingers in the air.

Red-faced, I retrieved my keys from amongst the chicken feet, and started filling my green plastic bowl with tofu kebabs. And because I was in a foul mood and certainly needed it, also a few bites of octopus.

“Haven’t you heard a foreigner speak Chinese before?” I fired off in English over bundles of beans and cauliflower.

But a glow had already started dancing over the woman’s cheeks, so I abandoned my little tirade. Maybe, I reckoned, she was lost in thought, and when I unexpectedly started mumbling strange words, she tried her best to understand what she probably thought was English.

The last laugh was hers, though. I prefer my deep-fried cauliflower and tofu with just a pinch of red pepper, and I was looking the other way when she heaped on the spices.

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TUESDAY, 19 AUGUST 2003

Brand Smit and his wife, Elsa Kleynhans, live with their two young children in number 11 Bluestone Lane. Marie, their oldest, is five and a half, and Ben is three. Brand spends most of the conventional workday on his literary projects. He’s currently working on a first draft of an idea about struggle and creativity, especially in the context of the suburban middle class. Between his study, the living room and the kitchen, chances are that you’ll find a copy of at least one of his two volumes of poetry, as well as a copy of the collection of essays and other pieces from his time in Taiwan and Korea.

Brand’s daily routine follows a familiar pattern. He usually gets up before Elsa and the children, makes them breakfast, takes the children to kindergarten, and drops Elsa off at the primary school where she teaches. Then he might spend an hour or two at the library, and between lunch and dinnertime he’s usually behind his computer.

Apart from the meagre income he earns from his writing, he also publishes English textbooks with a business partner in Taiwan. This endeavour takes him to East Asia at least once a year for book fairs and to talk business with local schools.

Last December, the family visited Elsa’s family in the Cape, and Brand swore never again. Elsa’s brother is a local businessman and prominent member of the community. As before, they didn’t sit around the same campfire when the conversation – as it almost always does – turned to politics and religion. Brand initially said they should stay home this December. After talking about it again, he and Elsa now plan to go to Mozambique for a week or so with Brand’s younger sister and her husband. Christmas will again be at Elsa’s parents in Bloemfontein, and New Year’s with his parents in Middelburg.

Brand frequently talks about the time he spent in the East. Elsa listens patiently, although she can by now tell all the stories in almost exactly the same words. Sometimes someone Brand knew in Taiwan would visit them. They usually talk late into the night about typhoons, pollution, epidemics, English classes and Chinese. Brand registered for a correspondence course in Chinese at UNISA after returning from Asia. He finds it ironic that he now speaks better Chinese than when he lived in Taiwan.

When Brand turned forty last year, he bought himself a lawnmower. Elsa laughed when he first mentioned the idea, but he thought the time had come to see if he could still use one (gardening services had done the necessary maintenance until that point).

Brand is devoted to his wife and children. He hopes Marie will one day become an architect or a vet. Although it’s still too early to say, he believes little Ben may also develop into a writer. He shares this with anyone who wants to hear, and looks embarrassed every time Elsa says to him, “Allow the child to become his own man.” His usual response – he can see it in the boy’s eyes. A writer, or – who knows? – maybe a clergyman.

* * *

Stella Adler said: “Life beats down and crushes the soul. Art reminds you that you have one.”

Brand Smit reckons: “The future waits for those who are patient enough to first figure out the meaning of life.”

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TUESDAY, 19 AUGUST 2003

Let’s play a game. Let’s imagine I’m wrong in terms of 90% of the things I’ve been saying for the past few years.

What would this mean? It would mean that creativity is a luxury that can only be enjoyed by the wealthy, or then only as a hobby by the rest of us. It would mean that one should be grateful if you get any kind of job, and that you therefore have to be grateful for the privilege to address someone as BOSS. That if your services are no longer required by a company, it’s just your bad luck, and probably your own fault because you were dispensable in the first place. That by the time you leave high school – if you were so privileged to have spent twelve years in school – you should have worked out without any drama where you fit in the Great Hierarchy, and be ready to take your place with conviction. That you have to take what comes your way, and just accept it with a dignified “That’s just life.” That you should get married and start procreating as soon as you get a job, because that is what nature dictates, and what society requires. And that you would go to hell if you don’t believe everything the Bible says. It would also mean that banks, large corporations and the government are right because they are stronger than you. That you should treat the bank manager, the boss and the politician with respect because they are higher than you on the Hierarchy.

If these things are true and I’m wrong, I’m in deep trouble.

Anyways, where was I …

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