What I've been up to 1

I can't believe that I only have three more days left in Taiwan. Time just flies. It always does even though I don't think I've done very much. I am heading back to Australia on Monday, and then New Zealand in early November for my third summer this year. Basically this is the home run leg of my 07 trip.

Its funny thinking about this home run. Taiwan, Australia, then New Zealand - after a whirlwind tour of Europe, Indian subcontinent and China. The contrast of being back on a land you are familiar with, identify with, and slip in so easily. How can someone have three homes? each of them deeply embedded like a mole or a scar, and riles me with both happiness and hurt every time when I think of them? And how could I tear myself away from home like this time and again thinking that I'll be a different person tomorrow when I wake up on the other side of the world?

While my blog entries especially for China and Bangladesh are very very far behind and continuing to worry me because the mental notes in my head are slowly fading, I am distracted by procrastination as well as some really important things that wasn't there when I was travelling - family and familiarity.

I've been spending a lot of time basically picking up where I left it with a lot of my family members since I saw them last - not so much redeveloping a relationship with them but more like ensuring a continuity. Same thing that I do with my Taiwanese identity and culture. When I am back here I get a crash course and update myself a little bit as Taiwan moves ahead with time. Culture moves with time, and I want to be part of it. Everything here seems to always be exciting, whether it be politics, religion or pop music and gossip.

Family relationships are my least favourite subject because its intensely emotional, and it takes a lot of confrontation(courage) and acceptance(honesty). And talking about it on the WWW is even harder because it is at the end of the day really quite personal and however I try and interpret it it never sounds right. I can never do it as well as my little cousin Ann's blog, which is extremely inspiring. She's only just turned 15, but her blog is a truly inspiring piece of work where she lays everything out for the world, the honesty about life, love, emotions and her confrontations. Its raw, beautiful, and a lot more meaningful than my stupid rants about missing the plane. Maybe I could try harder. One thing I am trying hard though lately is really sitting down and spending some time with people I love. The details will bore you, but the rewards have truly been great for me.

Although they would ferociously deny this, my immediate and extended family is definitely quite weird compared to my contemporaries' (both Asian and European). Up till I was ten I lived with my parents, sister, my Dad's parents and his five brothers and sisters till we moved to New Zealand, and my sister and I were pretty much co-parented by my aunts and uncles (who hadn't had kids of their own then) as well, so the kind of relationship that we have is more than your regular extended family. When I come back for visits year after year it feels as if I go back into a time capsule of being that eternal primary school kid under the wings of people who are so similar to me and understand me without requiring any explanation, who will always stand by me no matter how much I would disappoint them. But in reality I've grown apart from them too, in the sense that my values and attitudes and world view is so different to them, and while it really doesn't matter at the end of the day who I've become, the distance there is huge - its not just a generation gap but a cultural gap as well.

Re Weird: Now half of my original family is in Taiwan and half of them are in New Zealand, its like we're torn apart. My aunts and uncles kids are living with my parents in New Zealand, and my sister is living in Taiwan with my aunts and uncles and my grandfather - she has a new job in Taipei which is fantastic for her. Unfortunately at the moment a number of my family members are ill or recovering from an illness of various extents. Without going into too much details, it is all making me really anxious and uneasy, and quite guilty that I am away so much, on a seemingly selfish soul-searching project moving from town to town, flat to flat and country to country. The little time I have with them every year or so is always so precious, but always so hard because I need to tear myself away again. I know that I can never satisfy my longing for Independence with them, but when I'd be alone and on my own there's that emptiness and the sense of not belonging where ever I would be.

Apart from spending time with them and reconnecting, there are other further afield relos that I haven't seen for a while that I've made time for because I want to continue to be part of their lives, simply because they are good people. And meeting two new fourth cousins for the first time, a boy and a girl who was recently adopted into the family was truly special. I probably have over 50 or so cousins but one more is never daunting. Its a pleasure to think that I could have such unique connections with people that I would otherwise never know. I could never make up for the missed birthdays and the Lunar new years, but I am here now, and want to continue to be here even though it might be through a computer screen or a phone wire. It really is a healing process for me, because I feel like all this time away is a way of running away from confronting and receiving the sometimes really intense love and attention they try to give me, and paving out a way of being myself independently. Its a give-take thing. I think I'm old enough and seen enough to give now.

And I visited my grandmother's grave for the first time in eight years. I am the sort of person that doesn't blink an eye hunting out other people's grave yards in hillside Wellington, rural New South Wales, suburban Berlin, and industrial Vienna, but stresses out for two days about the thought of visiting my own grandmother's grave 15 minutes drive away. If it wasn't for my Dad who put the finger down I wouldn't have gone this time either. I just like to procrastinate on these things as much as possible, simply because I never got over her death, nor really had the chance to really grieve, and never brave enough to confront it. That's a weakness of mine, something that I fear of within myself. But quite simply, it wasn't as bad as I thought, and to my surprise I didn't cry, and was only a little bit upset. I don't know whether I have actually healed without really knowing it, or that I can hide anger and resentment and sadness much better than I thought. I can't guarantee what it would be like when I go next time, whenever that would be, but visiting this time has lowered a big chip on my shoulder. Time and age has diluted and overlapped some of those things I can never quite capture. And so it goes.