A night in Hualien

"So your brother worked in India? What does he think of it?" I asked her.

"Umm.. nice, but he told me the people are lazy" said she, "...they would stop working many times."

She was trying to recall a word. I made a guess and showed her the Chinese character for the verb "to go on a strike" on my phone. Her face blossomed into a smile as she said "yes yes .. strike. They would do this many times." I was pleasantly surprised to find someone near fluent in English in the town.

"Well he must have worked in public sector. Most people there are lazy. In private sector, people work very hard", I tried to explain.

She was nearing forty. I asked her why she was still unmarried. She muttered something, but midway her explanation her eyes welled up with tears. I felt bad and stupid. I thought of consoling her but found it much easier to pretend I didn't notice anything. I casually veered the conversation to a lighter topic. I took a few pictures insider her shop and said good bye to her. She didn't seem sad any longer. My heart felt lighter. I left. 

It was around half past nine, and I walked through the cross section of the city towards the railway station.

The station opened to a vast open area with a few benches. It was ten in the night. 

"I am in SWAT. It's in police", he said in broken English. He was fit, and displayed impressive agility and skill as he performed tricks on his mini-bike. The conversation soon began to take place in Mandarin. 

"Is it the same as Wei-an?" I asked

"No, Wei-an is high level. It's in Taipei. SWAT is low level."

"Taiwan is very safe. Do you like your job?" I oversimplified my question to fit it in my limited grasp of Mandarin.

"Some people have handguns. We have to stop them", he replied using the same tone of simplicity.

"What do they do with handguns? They don't rob here", I asked, resorting to use of body language for the latter part.

"They smuggle handguns and drugs..they take drugs, handguns for safety... where do you live?"

"I am going to Taipei tomorrow at 6 am. So I will spend the night here at the station."

"Why don't you go to a hotel? Not very expensive."

I said, "I want to see how it's like. And I want to save a little money." I pointed at his mini bike and said, "Can I try?"

As soon as I stood up to get on the bike, everyone around began looking at me. A lazy stray dog who had been lounging around indifferently sprang up with pointed ears to look at the expected antics of a foreigner. It even howled and a couple of its friends came running from across the road wagging their tails to watch what I was up to.
He taught me two simple tricks. I bungled twice. They practiced for a few more minutes and then they left.

It was half past mid-night. I ambled around the station. I walked past the open area into a small park. I looked around. I spotted him again. I walked towards him and said, "Why are you following me? What do you want?"
"I am sorry if I scared you. I want to speak English with a foreigner.", he said in a meek tone.
"Not now. I want to sleep somewhere. And you are scaring me by following me. Go away please." He left.

I was lying on a bench. A group of homeless people had huddled around a bench a few meters away. One of them saw me and, wondering why one of them was left out, walked to me. He was a little startled to discover I was a waiguoren. I told him I needed to take a train early morning. He gave me a thumbs up and left.

I bought a bottle of water and sat on a chair. Eventually I fell asleep for a few hours.

I was woken up by the first rays of the sun. I came out of the station. The mountains behind the station shone in the fresh sunlight. They looked gorgeous. I took a stroll till it was six. At 6:05 I went to a bike rental shop. The guy had been waiting for me.
"Did you sleep well?" he asked.
"I could barely sleep. But it was a little chilly and windy. I love windy nights. So I had fun. These mountains look beautiful"
"Yes, many people come here to travel."
"I would love to live here."
We shared a laugh. He pointed at my backpack "That's your bag."
"Thanks so much. It would have been very difficult to spend the night outdoors with such a heavy bag."
"Bu hui" he said.

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Lost

It was evening getting darker and darker. Summer had ended and autumn had begun.

I was in a train. It had halted at a station with no people. Streetlamps illuminated two empty seats on the vacant platform.

It had been four hours traveling. My sense of time had gone wonky. All past events seemed to have occurred far back in the past. It was telescopic effect in action. 

I knew no one around me. No one around me knew me. Everything was unfamiliar. Two guys behind me were chatting in a language I didn't understand. The old lady sitting beside me was reading a book I couldn't read. The city I was going to was new to me. I had no friends, no acquaintances.

I had come to find comfort in all this unfamiliarity. I had soaked oodles of it in the past few months. It kept me on the edge. It constantly piqued my curiosity. It kept me awake.

The slight rocking of the moving train, the ambiance outside and humming sound of the engine had created a transporting atmosphere. I saw things in a different state of mind. 

I could see myself begin from level zero. I could create relationships and forge a social circle. I could feel the nascent emotions of joy and fear taking shape. I was imaging a life I could live here. I was reminiscing some good times from my past.

The train was still cradling my chair. I fell into a lovely sleep. 

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Exploring the Creative Fraternity in Asian Cities

I have a clear idea of what the things I like doing are. I have a blear picture of what I will be doing sometime in near future. I keep thinking constantly, getting/creating ideas, building up on existing ideas, gleaning information from different sources but mostly internet. I have my own limitations. I want to evade the corporate juggernaut and I don't want to fixate myself in front of a computer for long hours unless I am doing something really captivating. So this is what I do when I am on my own.

I also meet people - this is where one aspect of all my traveling comes into action. It took me a short while to streamline the process of contacting people. I began with attending a networking event in HK. It creeped every inch out of me. It was strongly suggestive of the stifling atmosphere in typical big firms. There were no meaningful conversations. Everyone was selling themselves. Like a commodity. 

What I do now is much better. In every city I visit, I look for stuff that I find interesting. Then I meet people working on that stuff. It works out in many ways. I don't have to posture to impress others and it's easy to convince what I am doing. The conversations are a lot more meaningful, forthright and sometimes deep too. I try to avoid meeting people in groups. It has rarely worked out. A good chunk of people I meet are expats. 

This quest for interesting pieces of work leads to a low-key, mostly independent section of the economical clockwork - start-ups, entrepreneurs, artists, studios, hacker-spaces, co-working areas and freelancers. A common underlying pursuit of most of these entities is that they want to be heard. Their common theme is that they are not run-of-the-mill, they are not stuck in the groove and they lie on the periphery of comfort zone. This is the kind of people I mostly talk to. 

Some people tend to have one-off conversations while keeping genuineness and interest intact. They never reply to my messages afterwards. It upsets me. It makes me think something's wrong with me. Some of the conversations fizzle out gradually and some of them continue. 

Hackerspaces are interesting spots - they are mostly grungy lab-like co-working spaces where most of the activities gravitate towards geekiness. But the isolation of such little pockets of creativity is a little bit scary. Co-working spaces are much better in terms of being comfy. Art related events are another end of the spectrum - they are more visible, and more diverse. Artists seem to be a happier bunch than where I come from. 

This is a part of what I have been doing for the past couple of months in different cities of Asia. 

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