Wednesday, June 29, 2005

Reading Habits

It's funny, really. When I spend time in Canada, my reading habits tend to be focused almost exclusively on Asia, when I read books at all. But, when I'm in Asia, I read voraciously, and a large part of what I read is related to North America and Europe! I think it has something to do with connecting with the society I no longer feel a part of, alone here, I am reaching for a piece of home and I get it through the written word.

Actually, I consider it one of the happy side effects of living here, I do enjoy reading and regret that I don't do more of it when I am at home in Canada. I read mostly non-fiction, but I do try to catch up on books I have been curious about for a long time or know are classics but have never touched. Especially in my current job, I have to travel about the city and wait a lot, and this affords me a lot of extra time with nothing special to do. For a while I was reading the newspaper, the Taipei Times is an excellent English language newspaper (one of 3 English language papers in Taiwan), but I got bored of always doing that so I started to make trips to the bookstore instead. I find it takes me a week or so to polish off a novel, maybe less if I get so into it I spend all my free time reading it. (Good books suck you in, what can I say?)

Recently I've had an interest in the Napoleonic era of Europe (don't ask why, I have no clue) so when I went into the Page One (the biggest bookstore in Taipei) and found a copy of Horatio Hornblower sitting on the shelf I knew it was what I wanted to read. Set in the Napoleonic Era, Hornblower is the story of how a young seaman goes from Midshipman to Admiral in the British Navy. C.S. Forrester wrote 11 Hornblower novels, and apparently they're considered major classics of British fiction. I remember reading once that Gene Roddenbery based some of the character of Captain Kirk off Horatio Hornblower, which I guess I will understand more when I reach the point Horatio is a Captain. Right now, he's still a Midshipman, and I have to say the first book is a really good read that I can say I recommend wholeheartedly.

One interesting comment I read today was:

"Hornblower was of the type that would continue to observe and to learn on his deathbed."

When I read this, I thought to myself, that's not just Hornblower, that's me! It's interesting how a good book can actually teach you about yourself. Time abroad isn't just a time of learning about the outer world, but the inner one as well.

The Mystery of the Well Dressed Woman...

Well, continuing my research into where all those well dressed women that populate the streets of Taipei in the absence of men come from, I consulted with a new all female class that I just started to teach. I decided that since they seem to be the people I'm talking about, I should just ask them. To a degree, they were as perplexed as I was as I laid out the situation, and one of them stepped up to bat to point out to her classmates that I was indeed right, there was a disproportionate number of women in the streets of downtown Taipei during the working hours. But, as a group they came up with an answer, which was that what I'm seeing is the result of Taipei being such a huge city. With millions of people living in Taipei and her suburbs, and with the Asian female focus on fashion, what I am seeing they decided was an influx of women shoppers from the suburbs. There aren't malls in Taipei like there are in Canada, people here come downtown to shop in fashionable stores, and so while their significant others and family members worked they are here making their shopping trips. Because of the sheer number of people living around Taipei, it only takes a very small part of the female population making the trip to fill the streets on a daily basis.
Your average woman is indeed working or involved with her family like any other place, we concluded, but others are enjoying their extra time shopping. The men, it seems, just have no reason to leave their air conditioned homes and offices to come downtown.

Rob

Far from home...

It's interesting how things affect you when you're living far away from home in a foreign land, your habits change, your point of view changes, and some things that aren't so important when you're at home suddenly become very meaningful. Probably this is part of adapting to life in an alien environment, but it doesn't help when you wake up to things like a news article about a shooting in your hometown. Of course what happened in London was shocking, but to me it was moreso by the very fact it was in London, and I am far away, so everything that happens there seems somehow magnified from my perspective.

Actually, that shooting may be connected to me in more ways than just it happening in London, because I noted that the people involved were all immigrants. I've noticed that when crimes like this happen it often seems to be immigrants that are involved, whether in Canada, the US or England. I don't think this is because there is anything wrong with the immigrants, per se (although obviously something was wrong with this man), but I do have to wonder if the stress of living in a foreign country might not have something to do with events like this. People who never leave their home countries will never understand the subtle stress and pressure that you are under all the time when you live abroad. You are not at home, you are adrift in an environment you can neither control nor understand (interestingly enough, one article about this case I read notes that the parents only barely spoke English after 15 years in Canada) and you cling to whatever you can find.

If I have to guess, in this horrible case I would suspect the mother had a boyfriend (with another lonely dispossessed soul) while her husband trucker was away, and decided to break it off with him for the sake of her family. The boyfriend lost it, and this is the result. Given that the mother was very likely stuck raising the kids alone for long periods of time in a foreign environment where the loneliness can be crushing, I can sympathize with her. She probably started the relationship out of desperate loneliness with her husband away all the time and no other Polish speaking adults around her, and things got out of control.

A sad story that repeats again and again...One which could probably be cured if there was more community support and outreach for immigrants trying to struggle with a new life in a new land. Sure, they chose that life, but oftentimes they got more than they bargained for.

Rob