Pajama Empress

Maybe my last post was a little premature – I found an abridged version of what I intended to post had managed to save itself as a draft. Here it is. 

I wish that one of two things would happen: a) Homer Simpson was a real person, and would marry me, OR b) I was animated, and Homer Simpson would marry me.

Oh, how I hate winter. Last night I was in bed, snuggling into Lucien’s chest in a desperate bid to keep warm, under three layers of winter blankets. He was warm enough to have his shoulders out of bed, but I was still the human ice cube. He would flinch and pull away every time my icy feet touched his and refused to let me hug him, for fear of my deadly hands. Give me 40 degree days, wearing next to nothing and lazing on the beach after sunset any day.

Dad suggested that I should move to a warmer climate. Maybe I will. If I ever have a child, I would definitely demand that she spent at least some of her life growing up in Taipei. It’s the most wonderful city – Melbourne has its charms, but it does tend towards pretentiousness. Taipei was… well, Taipei.

Our house was on Yangmingshan, a mountain district near the city. It was a squarish white stucco building surrounded by squirrel-infested palm trees, six foot walls, then rainforest. Once a year for a couple of days we would be overrun with these scary little flies – they would swarm into the house in their thousands through every tiny crack, then their wings would drop off and they would die. We’d find them in our beds, our hair, and then their crunchy bodies would litter the floor. Another time after a typhoon, our swimming pool was hijacked by about 50 toads. My brother Vince was enlisted to get rid of them, so he made it a game – picking them out of the pool, tossing them into the air and hitting them over the fence with a baseball bat. Cruel, yes, but don’t people get cane toads with golf clubs in Queensland?

On our bus ride to school, we would pass a butcher in the street who we lovingly named “The Chicken Scrambler”. Outside his tiny shop he would have cages and cages of chicken, geese, ducks and all manner of other birds when we were heading off to school at 7am. By 3 when we were coming home, he’d be hosing down the footpath; blood, feathers and entrails would float towards the drain and disappear. We’d giggle uncomfortably and make “ewww’ noises, while everybody stared. We did this every day.

Michael Mellor was the principal of the Taipei British School when I went there. I remember one day, after one of the Year Nine girls had been publicly caught smoking pot and having sex in a city garden, he took all the junior classes aside for some improvised drug education. He put on a video of some 1970’s rock event in London, and pointed out which people had died, and showed us a before-and-after on Keith Richards. We were suitably scared.

One of my happiest memories is of the last year we were in Taiwan, Fourth of July celebrations at the American School. Hot dogs, fireworks, my whole family together…

Going to a school for children of expats (affectionately called the International Brat Pack), my best friends changed frequently as people’s parents wrenched them away to a new overseas posting. There was Eva (Dutch), Suzanne (Dutch, again), Nurulhuda (Malaysian), Sang Joon (South Korean), Jay (British), Laura (Australian), Thomas (British), Joshua (Australian), Ayaka (Japanese), Vivian (Chinese American), Rafika (Zimbabwean), Emily (Swedish), Adam (Scottish).. the list goes on. The fact that somebody came from another country, had different coloured skin, ate unfamiliar food… I never got a chance to have that seem odd to me. When I came back to Australia and encountered racism for the first time, it took me a long time to understand what the problem was.

It is a very strange thing to realize you have culture shock from returning to your ‘home’ country. I came back to Australia and jumped back into the year level that was age appropriate. On looking back, I really should have skipped a year or two, or simply demanded to go back to Taiwan. It’s a controversial opinion, but primary and secondary education in Australia makes me want to bash my head against a concrete wall, repetitively. In fact, that’s a pretty accurate description of how returning to the Australian education system felt.

In Taipei, we learnt about things like line, perspective, and composition in Art class. Physical education meant learning about many different sports and the way our bodies reacted to different things. Doing substantial amounts of work was simply expected. In Australia, we would draw on old vinyl records with paint markers and call them ‘art’. P.E. meant spending an afternoon once a week playing t-ball (I still don’t know how to play). Spelling words in Grade Six were still things like “frequent”. Gah. Upon coming back, I developed an attitude towards school that took a long time to shrug – basically “I don’t have to even try, and I still get top marks”. Now it’s coming back to bite me… university is a huge jump from high school, and my high school education was mediocre at best.

Recurring Dream by Crowded House was the soundtrack to the entire time in Taipei. Mum and Dad would listen to it because it reminded them of home; nowadays, I listen to it and it reminds me of Taipei, a place I consider as much my home as Australia.