I assumed that since I was not in the United States or Canada that I would not be celebrating Thanksgiving. Little did I know.

During lunch this past Sunday, Dr. Lee casually brought up the possibility of arranging an office Thanksgiving celebration. I smiled and nodded and offered little comment; as usual, I kept quiet and ate my food and let Dr. Lee speak his mind. He asked me what Americans typically eat for Thanksgiving, and I offered the usual turkey, mashed potatoes, stuffing, cranberry sauce. He sat back in his chair and cleared his throat, then asked me if I were full. I answered, of course, yes, thank you very much, and our little party--Dr. Lee, M-- a coworker, Dr. Lee's two sons, and myself--got up and headed to the restaurant's exit to pay. The topic of Thanksgiving was quickly forgotten, and I began conversing with the elder son about American sports.

The next day at work, I was surprised by a sudden whir of gossip. "I hear that Dr. Lee wants us to hold a Thanksgiving celebration" was the running theme. Soon rumors became reality, as the office manager came to my cubicle and asked me what typical Thanksgiving fare included. She took down notes as I gave my response. She thanked me and walked off, leaving myself wondering if I had just set into action the nebulous plans from the previous day. Shortly thereafter, an official announcement was made: the Wellness Committee was organizing a Thanksgiving lunch, and welcomed all to join them on Thursday for a delicious turkey meal.

The announcement annoyed many of my coworkers, especially those who were also members of the Wellness Committee. Thanksgiving meal preparations usually take days of careful planning and shopping and cooking, days that busy lawyers and staff just don't have. The Wellness Committee had a mere three-and-a-half days to prepare a Thanksgiving meal for almost sixty people. In Taiwan, Thanksgiving is only celebrated by American expatriates, so none of the Wellness Committee members had ever prepared a Thanksgiving meal. By the end of the day, I had very ominous feelings toward the Thanksgiving development.

The next day did not allay my worries. The office manager called me shortly after I arrived for work and asked me if I knew how to make mashed potatoes. I told her I didn't. She asked me if I would like to help to make some anyway. I agreed, convinced that I needed to at least make an effort to avert a potential Thanksgiving catastrophe. I researched some recipes and cooking techniques online and forwarded an ingredient list to the office manager. She replied her thanks me and informed me that I would be working with J-- on the potatoes.

Within minutes of receiving this reply, J-- called me to ask when I'd be free to prepare the potatoes. It being a slow work week for me, I told her that anytime would be fine. She then suggested--very wisely--that we first attempt a small batch before committing to a large recipe. We set a time on Wednesday to try our luck.

In the meantime, another member of the Wellness Committee approached me and asked me if I would be willing to give a brief introduction to Thanksgiving before the meal. Again, I agreed, to be helpful. But as I was composing this introduction, a horrible realization struck me: if Thanksgiving really required an introduction, what were we doing celebrating it? The only reasonable answer, I found, was myself.

I was one of two Americans in a  firm of sixty. The other American had worked at the firm for more than a year, while I had only worked at the firm for less than two months. I was lonely and homesick and about to spend my first Thanksgiving away from home and in a continent that didn't even celebrate the holiday. And this year's celebration would be the firm's first. Could there have been any doubt?

The realization worried me. I had left home with an expecation of working abroad as an adult: being an adult in my mind meant independence. I especially wanted to avoid overtaxing the hospitality of others. Working at the firm of a friend of my parents already felt taxing enough; this Thanksgiving celebration seemed destined to be the straw--or more appropriately, the bale--that would break this overtaxed camel's back.

Fortunately, none of my coworkers made any of this apparent. As J-- and I peeled and sliced and cooked and mashed first three and then twenty-some potatoes the next day, I heard no harsh words. Even as Thanksgiving morning came with the food not yet fully prepared, I heard only an occasional barb of frustration pointed at the holiday amidst the mad rush of food preparation.

As the day progressed, a long set of tables was set in the lobby of the main floor of the firm, and plates of home- and office-prepared food began appearing on it, filling my mind with images of Thanksgiving back home. The menu was not lacking any of the traditional food. It even contained several non-canonical items that some especially enthusiastic Committee members prepared--a fish-dip and spaghetti and meat sauce, for example. As lunch time rolled around, people began mingling in the lobby, eying the food, waiting for the appearance of the all-important turkeys.

The two turkeys had been ordered at a western food market. Although already cooked, they still required heating. In the break room, someone had set up two small roasting ovens, and the turkeys had been dutifully placed in them early in the morning. But as 12:30 arrived and with the commencement of the feast imminent, it was discovered that one of the turkey ovens had been victim of a blown fuse: the poor turkey inhabiting it was horribly underheated. Fortunately, the other turkey had been sitting in its oven quite warm, so it was decided that the meal could still proceed. The done turkey was carried out on a platter and placed in the middle of the long set of tables around which people were already waiting. With the turkey oven drama fresh in my mind, I gave a very brief, hardly coherent introduction to Thanksgiving. People cheered, the turkey was carved, and people began to eat.

I soon forgot all my Thanksgiving induced anxieties. Eating delicious food and seeing others doing the same are an indescribable joy; and in that moment, joy displaced any unease that had been troubling me. Seeing such expertly executed dishes and such skilled carving of the turkey, I almost forgot that I was half a world away from the original first Thanksgiving and in a place where Thanksgiving was as foreign as I was.

---

As I write this account of the past week, I can easily see how fortunate I am. There are too many people and things that have helped me in adjusting to life here in Taipei that any list that I make will necessarily be incomplete. But I will add a few words of thanks anyway without trying to be exhaustive.

Firstly, I am thankful for having turkey to eat on Thanksgiving. I am also thankful that I did not have to be the one to carve the turkey, and that we instead had an intensely un-American Englishman to do the honors.

I am thankful that J-- knew how to make mashed potatoes and that M-- was there to help. I am thankful that the mashed potatoes came out edible even with my help in the kitchen. I am trebly thankful that people found the potatoes tasty. I can only blame J-- for their success.

I am thankful for the firm's patience with this very American holiday. I am still amazed at how readily my coworkers added to their workload just to experience this aspect of American culture.

I am thankful for having the opportunity to celebrate Thanksgiving even as I spend my first Thanksgiving away from home. I am thankful that Dr. Lee came up with the idea, and that the people at the firm--especially M-- and the Wellness Committee--were willing and able to pull off a miracle Thanksgiving meal on three days notice.

And I am very thankful for all of the kindness and thoughtfulness and empathy that everyone I've met here has shown me, not just during Thanksgiving week, but from the first day I arrived. My experience in Taipei could have been a bore and a waste of time, but instead it has been enriching, enlightening, and empowering all thanks to individual kindness multiplied across an entire firm.

I am thankful for being here and being able to write these grateful words even as the sun sets on America marking the end of another Thanksgiving day.

I enjoy my work enough.

The people at the firm are very, very nice. And they all look so young! On the first two days, co-workers took me out to lunch. The first day, it was a rather large group, the younger lawyers, and they were loud and fun and not so different from college students, and the oldest looked 20 but were 28. The second day, it was a small group, associate partners among them, and they were kind and helpful and I could've sworn at most in their late-20s, but they were parents, with photos of kids and all. I still feel strange, talking to these people whom I thought were my peers but who are actually years and years older than me, and I keep wondering, am I being deferential enough? am I being too familiar? am I being too deferential?, because I really cannot for the life of me tell what age someone is here just by their looks, and I really don't know what sort of behavior is polite in this culture. With my parents friends, I know how to act. But with "co"-workers? Who knows!

At the firm, I'm at the intersection of two office cultures. My cubicle (what? a cubicle! ack!) is with the secretaries' and the accounting department's, non-lawyers, all of us.  My work is given me by the lawyers, and my work interaction with them clearly sets me as their inferior. But the lawyers keep asking me to join them for lunch, and so I take my lunch with the lawyers and not the secretaries or accountants. Thus by now, I can name all the younger lawyers in the firm, but not even half of the accountants I share a cubicle complex with. And these aren't your standard American "Office Space" cubicles, tall enough to hide inside. These cubicles allow you to see everyone else while sitting; the walls only reach my elbow when I stand. So I should know all six people I share a printer with (my cube is right next to the printer), but I don't. And it's strange.

And people at work have no idea how to talk to me. Some use Chinese. Some use English. And some start to use English, decide against it, and then just smile and wave. Of course, I don't make things easier for anyone. Having grown up in the States, I impulsively (compulsively) use English first, especially when addressing someone who looks my age. If someone else initiates the talking, I converse appropriately in Chinese; but if I speak first, I almost always begin with English, after which I stop mid-sentence and switch to Chinese. I don't doubt that some people at the firm must think I'm not too quick on the uptake because of my rather ungraceful language skills.

The hours at the firm are flexible, at least for the lawyers. As an inbetweener (not lawyer, yet not quite staff), I try to stick with the staff hours, 9 to 6, but I've stayed late a couple times to finish work. The latest I've stayed is 8. My daily schedule has been as follows:

7:00-7:20 AM - Wake up, brush teeth.
7:20-8:00 - Jogging
8:00-8:45 - Eat breakfast, watch some TV (live playoff baseball!), shower
8:45-9:00 - Walk to work
9:00-12:30PM - Work.
12:30-1:30PM - Lunch.
1:30-6:00 - Work.
6:00-6:30 - Walk home, get changed.
6:30-11:00 - Walk around Taipei looking for different places to eat. Eat dinner. Play guitar. Go online.
11:00-7:00 AM - Sleep.

Excitement!

---

In Taipei, safety is not first.

It's important to properly ground electric appliances, right? Not here, it ain't. Outlets here are not grounded. But, stores do sell appliances with 3-pronged plugs. So what's a person to do?

Let me diagram this. (Forgive the bad drawings.)

So in figure 1, we have the appliance 3-pronged plug on the left, and a 2-socketed extension cord on the right. Notice how the extension cord head is very flat. This is important. (Coincidentally, it also expands one outlet into three.)


Figure 1.

In figure 2, we have the 3-pronged plug plugged into one of the 2-socketed faces of the extension cord. Notice how the "ground" prong is not plugged into anything. It just sits quietly underneath the head of the extension cord. Here, this is considered clever use of available extension cords. In America, this is considered "an electrical fire hazard."


Figure 2.

By the way, I saw this setup in a department store. And the 3-pronged plug was the plug of a surge protector, which was in turn powering another extension cord. I asked a store clerk about this, and he said, "oh, it's fine." I took his word for it and took my leave of the store.


 

As many of you may know, I am now in Taipei about to begin work at Lee, Tsai, and Partners. I'm here until roughly February when I'll be relocating to Shanghai until I get into graduate school--which I hope will be fall of 2007. But we'll see.

I arrived in Taipei with my father on October 4th. He just left for home not too long ago. In the time he was here, he helped me settle in, apply for a bank account, get used to the food, meet his and my mom's old friends, and in general prepare for life in a country foreign to me, but familiar to him. He took me around Taipei. When he realized bad I am with directions, he bought me a huge map poster of the city. He took me out to eat. When he realized how small the servings are here relative to home, he started taking me out twice per meal. He even went jogging with me the one time I went.

But now he's on his way home, back to America, and I'm now here, half way around the world from home. I like my Taipei apartment, but on my way home from after seeing my dad off to the airport, I felt so strange returning there and opening the front door to a place I've only just moved into, knowing how far I am from friends and family. It's sobering, the distance. Is this what my parents felt when they first moved to America?

Taipei's a nice city. I know I'll come to love it. But I wonder: when will I begin to feel at home?

---

My address here is 臺北市大安區和平東路３段２１２巷６９號２樓之５. I can hardly remember it myself.

---

In Taipei, safety is not first.




This is a photo I took of the driver's seat belt of a taxi my dad and I took. There is a seat belt law in Taipei, and this driver dutifully uses his. But notice how the regular seat belt locking mechanism is not engaged. Instead, the belt is hooked to the seat. And how did this clever taxi driver attach this hook to the seat? Duct tape. Pretty ingenious, n'est-ce pas?

My younger sister is an "artist." Hopefully she won't starve as one.

Buy her art! Or just let her know how it looks.

Guten Abend. Typically I don't say much about my days, since I have little interest in relating things of little interest. Today's no different. Sorry, stalkers.

I will say, however, that I am taking introductory German and that my MAD GERMAN SKILLZ™ are steadily improving. German offers me some internal linguistic balance: I've had French "in" me for so long that having it finally surrender is refreshing. Of course, I'm not a little saddened at my diminishing MAD FRENCH SKILLZ™, but that's how things go, I guess. I try to revive my French on occasion by rereading "Les Mouches" (Sartre). It doesn't help.

But German! If I keep at it, I'll be able to read all those authors I've been meaning to read for so long: Hesse and Kafka and .... Hesse and ... um ... Kafka.