Balance | 平衡

October 31, 2024

I’m writing this post at the end of another typhoon day. Today, Taiwan was hit with super typhoon Kong-Rey, the biggest typhoon (typhoon = hurricane but in the pacific ocean) to directly hit Taiwan in over 30 years (today was a category 4). Taiwan’s typhoon season usually wraps up at the beginning of October, so to have a typhoon this late in the year is highly unusual. Reporters interviewed elderly people who said they had never experienced a typhoon in late October in Taiwan. I suppose there’s a first time for everything, but this one feels a bit depressing in light of the realities of climate change. Alas. Thankfully I am safe and sound in my little apartment here in Taipei. I watched the heavy rain and winds from the comfort of my fourth floor window. The wind whistled in my windows from time-to-time and the rain loudly pelted my balcony’s roof for the entire day. My day was otherwise uneventful, as evidenced by the 165 steps tracked in my iPhone health app. Enjoy the variety of screenshots that I've shared with various friends and family over the past 36 hours.

I’ve officially been in Taipei for two months, and it feels like I just arrived yesterday. Last week at work, we hosted our AI+ Demo Day, an event that I’ve been planning with my team for the past month. I was responsible for communicating with and managing our six international guests. Meeting them in person after emailing them for the past six weeks was a really neat experience! They were all really friendly and seemed to have a nice time in Taipei. The event went really smoothly. During our events, I often end up working overtime, sometimes until 9 or 10 pm. Thankfully, these long days are not the norm, something I’ve appreciated so far about my job.

My whole team at work

My coworker Amber and me

Me obviously being the most productive employee ever

Amber and me (Amber is very short)

Whole team with our international guests after our event

AI+ Demo Day event audience (spot me)

My orchestra concert a couple weeks ago was a lot of fun! We played well, and I enjoyed playing in a real auditorium! I had some fans in the audience too. I talked about it a bit in my last post, but playing this concert meant a lot to me. It’s been an opportunity for me to continue with violin while also pursuing my goal of living in Taipei for a while. I hung the concert poster up on my wall next to my ole orch posters…I expect the collection to keep growing! I’m already preparing for my next concert which is happening in early December!

At the concert hall

Dress rehearsal

Sound check

Full orchestra!

First violin section with a few stray second violins

Look at the hall!

Lukas

Erin

Hall stamp and backstage pass in my book

Poster!

Ole friends!

My conductor

Sushanthi

The day after my orchestra concert (which also happened to be two months since I arrived in Taipei, to the day), I felt like I got hit with a wall of loneliness. I’ve been missing college, missing family and close friends, missing my pets, and longing for deeper connections here in Taipei. These feelings are all normal, but still can be a real bummer. I feel like I’m surrounded by people all the time at work, swing, and orchestra, but haven’t built deeper connections yet. I continue to remind myself that deep connections take years to form; I’m trying to give myself some grace. All things considered, I’m doing well and am still content with life here, but some days just feel lonely. The people I have here in Taiwan are great, but many of them don’t know me like my friends and family do at home. I miss feeling known.

I’ll never fully belong in Taiwan; this is one of the harsh realities being a foreigner in a country where over 90% of people are ethnically Chinese. No matter how much I learn about Taiwan’s culture or how fluently I speak Chinese, I’ll always stick out because of how I look. This reality doesn’t really bother me, it’s just a fact of my existence here in Taiwan. The question then becomes: how do I build a sense of belonging in a country where I am always “foreign”? If anyone has any ideas or experience they’d like to share, I’m all ears! Building a substantial community in a time and place where all my relationships feel transient is incredibly challenging, but I’m hopeful that I will start to make more friends soon.

Learning to balance the difficult realities of living abroad with the joys of my new experiences sometimes feels like whiplash. In the challenging moments, I try to be kind to myself, seek out encouragement from friends and family, do things I enjoy, and search for small moments of joy.

Some small moments of joy in the past couple weeks have been: long phone calls with friends, finding some yellow leaves on the sidewalk with my coworker Amber, seeing my pets on FaceTime, seeing a skateboarding dog after my concert, noticing a stop sign with Snoopy stickers on the pole, feeding fish with my friend Sam, seeing the movie “the Wild Robot” (highly recommend), and appreciating Taipei’s nighttime scenery.

Night lights @ CKS

Skateboarding dog

Leaf!

Taipei 101

Coworkers!

Snoopy stop sign

Luna on FaceTime

Dakota on FaceTime

Caspian on FaceTime

On a completely unrelated but very important note, PLEASE GO VOTE! It’s a bit alarming to watch the US election from afar and there’s a lot at stake. Believe it or not, I already voted, all the way from Taiwan! If I can fill out the paperwork, fill in my ballot, and mail it all the way from Taiwan, you can go to your local polling station and vote. In most places, you don’t even need to wait until election day (November 5)! If you’re not registered, many states will allow on-site voter registration. If you don’t know how to register or where to go to vote, check out vote.gov for more information. Voting is a privilege!

If I voted all the way from Taiwan, so can you!

I can’t wait to tell you all about my trip to China in my next post!

With love from Taiwan,

Miriam

P.S. Also, as I was writing this post, there was also a small earthquake. Today was a day of seismological and meteorological activity!