It's now five days and counting until I leave for Taiwan. **Shivers**, as someone who plans on having his infamous ashes dumped all over the pacific rim I can't help but feel this is destiny. In high school I read Shogun by James Clavell and was infected immediately by a sickness so voracious the only cure was to go west one day to see/hear/live and feel Asia for myself.
My history teacher junior year, Professor Matthews - a short ball of fire with glasses and a tabasco sauce tie - hammered a point home to us constantly: the textbook is such a small and vulnerable source to base your understanding of the world on. First-hand experience will always outweigh the digestion of dusty volumes however high the pile may be. To see just how unmiraculously similar yet terminally intriguing the world really is brings me to reminisce about Matthews' mantra of manifest destiny, "Go West Young Man, GO WEST YOUNG MAN."
Taiwan is the most recent strain I've been infected by. First called Ilha Formosa "Beautiful Island" by Portugeuse sailors, it was first inhabited by aboriginal nomads, then by the Han Chinese, then European Traders, then the Chinese again, who then lost it to Japan which lost WWII, the Chinese again but......
I could go on but time is sparse as there're only 5 days left, and I tend to procrastinate.
Zai Jian until next time
