Life is about them. I guess that’s the whole point. Sometimes, even when you know these things, it’s hard to take it to heart — but I think it’s a worthwhile lesson to learn, right?

Image credit: Antonio Tajuelo, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

I’m back at my favorite not-very-little 咖啡店 that shall remain nameless (for sake of preventing too much repetition). I ordered the Starbucks “Horchata” syrup in my latte, and despite the exotic naming, it tastes exactly like French toast. I mean, it’s pretty excellent — still would have to be pretty memorable, though, to compete with the Pandan latte I had at the Korean restaurant I visited on Wednesday (the coffee in the last post’s thumbnail).

Despite the beginning of the week having been very eventful, the latter half of the week was pretty well-stocked with action, too. I’m pretty grateful for some of this week’s happenings — I’m not sure what I did to deserve finally making it into IIPP, having such a nice weather-night visiting around the town on Wednesday, and then — just yesterday — having such a productive morning (despite the work building being closed for fluorine vapors coming out of epoxy that never got poured). Truly, a week for the books.

I was online with some friends much later last night than I usually let myself stay up. We were playing Minecraft, which is always a good idea, and when I finally packed up and went to bed just past 11 PM, I wasn’t really able to sleep very well. It was just one of those nights — thinking about how I haven’t been able to get in touch with my PI for IIPP, I popped open my laptop to make sure that my secondary email was working (the one I was using as my IIPP contact email).

I sent an email from that inbox to my university inbox to make sure all was well. I sent the email, looked in my university inbox, and saw something else — an email from the PI! Pretty nice. I was surprised and grateful — he also CC’ed that other inbox, and about an hour later the email showed up there. It’s kind of a slow email service (mail.com — a little outdated, but works fine enough for a secondary address).

So I have my PI’s contact info now. This is nice — hopefully soon I can find out what my housing situation is going to be over that term. I’m hoping I can get an on-campus dorm at the university where I’ll be, optimally for free. I’ve been looking at Airbnbs, though, too — they’re very expensive (I’m assuming they’re all aimed at the foreigner-tourist market, which I can’t say I’m entirely separate from, but I at least would like to not fall into the trap if I can help it).

I mean, the place where I’m supposed to be moving is Taichung, which I can’t imagine is the tourist capital of the world, Taiwan, or anywhere (exactly what I’m after!).

Credit: bryan…, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

Speaking of Airbnb, I found housing for myself after the expiry of my lease for my actual apartment. It wasn’t the same one I was originally requesting on Wednesday — that seller never responded, and probably just doesn’t want to rent to college students, which is understandable — but I’ve got a nice one now and I’m looking forward to staying there. It’s nice that Airbnbs are reliably pre-furnished — I find nice decor charming, but never quite have the guts, vision, or creativity to put together a well-decorated room using just my own brainpower, so having Airbnb hosts do it for me keeps it interesting.

Now, when I was looking for this Airbnb, I found that it wasn’t available for what I’d assumed was going to be my last week of work — I couldn’t even book it the full way through my last full week there. After talking it through with my professor, though, it turns out he didn’t really expect anyone to show that last week anyway, and I have a friend who needs to be to a wedding by the weekend before. Besides, I want to visit the friend with some extra time for us to wander around the (definitely more interesting than Rochester) city where he lives, so I’d like to cut my work off at around the time that my Airbnb is up to go visit him. And so goes the plans for my month of August — Airbnb, visiting a friend, going home. And toward the end of the month I’d like to see what it takes to get my visa (I’ll have to have my housing settled by then, though).

I still can’t go back and change the mistaken embassy selection that I made for that first form, when I had to provide some of my plans for getting to the other ROC, 8,000 miles away. I’m still planning on taking the train — next-generation Acela will have to be what I do, and it’ll have to be interesting — but if I’m going that far out of my own way, anyway, I might as well stay in DC for a few days and see the sights and whatnot.

I haven’t been since I was about 11 years old (almost ten years ago) — in the good old naive days when Obama was president and we’d all thought that the country’s first Black and female presidents were going to serve back-to-back. We all think history makes sense until we see it play out in real time…

Anyway, being a tourist in your own city is one thing, but being a tourist in your own country — especially as an American — is bound to provide some neat opportunities (for discovery, photos, you know). National Mall shots may be coming.

And you know I’ll be blogging, walking up and down the train, testing the food, looking out the window, gauging the speed and the quality of the seats on the way down the Amtrak, but on the way back I’m going to spend the whole time staring at and stroking the shiny Taiwan visa I hope I’m able to get without too much issue. So, overall, I think neat opportunities are ahead past even the coming month.

I really do need to be orders of magnitude more grateful than I’ve been all year for the things that are happening to me this month, next month, and for the rest of the year — I’m not sure what I did to deserve some of these opportunities. Maybe I’ll head back on up over to Taipei and visit Dadaocheng, the home of the love god temple, the only one I made an attempt at praying in. The gods of love and the Beautiful Island have certainly been kind to me this year.

So while I’ve had my bored periods in the past few months, and I’m probably going to have more before mid-September — I have a month to visit home, but not too many plans — I consider the ups to more than outweigh some of those downs. To be honest, I think I complain about boredom too much, anyway — at least when I go home I at least get to visit my parents, who I really don’t see enough anymore (I, as with everyone who can, should always be calling my mom more often. Spreading the news — count the days since you last called your mom. Call your mom).

Ups and downs are a constant of life. Whenever I’m thinking of complaining — about being bored, about uncertainty — I’ll just have to remember the things I’ve gotten to see before and the things I’ll probably see in the future. A day, a week, or even a month of stagnation never really hurt anyone. In fact, in the end, it’s probably good.

It’s like that old medieval theory of music: that you should listen to music that covers moods that you don’t experience usually in order to keep the humors in your soul balanced (or however the phrasing went). The universe will balance the humors for you, whether you like it or not.

And remember, too, that luck is a combination of random chance and recognizing opportunity. Always be prepared to recognize and take those opportunities — I never got anywhere basking in my own pain for thinking I was too unlucky to get very far in my goals. And that Martin Luther King Jr. quote about any progress being good, whether it’s running, walking, or crawling, is relevant, too. As long as your goals don’t change, you’ll get closer to them.

And now that I’m done with my sugary caffeinated french toast latte, I’m feeling almost as good as I did that one time I drank an entire pot of oolong tea. I paid for parking at the Starbucks until almost noon, though, and it’s only 10 AM. Maybe I’ll just walk around my favorite little neighborhood here and try to find things I’ve missed passing through at car level during prior visits.

I think I’m going to actually take a blogging break for a while this time. I appreciate the readership (而中文版的博客貼可能快要做，希望你要看一看）and I’ll be back once enough notable things have happened to consitute another newspaper article-or-so’s worth of content.

Credit: 毛貓大少爺 from Taipei, Taiwan, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

I’ll be back!