Winter Break 3: Working in a Public Library and Watching a Movie with Two Loving Humans

Hello, Tim
This has been an eventful week and here's why:

An Exhausting Day between Libraries

As I foretold in the previous blog post, I “booked” a volunteering work at the Taipei Public Library (Punnnn) at Tuesday (which is today).

Exterior.

The time I reserved was a workload of four hours, from nine in the morning to one in the afternoon. I don’t think that I have ever explained how it is in senior highs in Taiwan. We have something called the “servicing hours”, and basically, it is one of the necessities for you to graduate from your high school. Each student has to finish at least 32 hours during the three years of school (eight for each of the first four semesters) to qualify for graduation. The required thirty-two hours was never a problem before, for I had it covered since the winter break last year when I volunteered in the church where Doris and her family are in. I got a sole 32 hours from that, plus I’m always helping with the school library after school.

So far, I have gained around 82.7 hours service, and with the four hours I got today, which makes it 86.7 hours in total. I aim to get more than a hundred, and it’s not far away.

Upon checking in for work when I arrived at the library, I was brought to the room behind the service desk, where many staffs were already doing what I was supposed to be doing for the next one hour. They were sorting out the books from different branches (they have around 68 branches, I think. Each, as they claimed, had their own characteristics) some were supposed to be returned to the branch they belong to, and some were to be put on the reserved shelves, which was what I worked on in the later hours.

It was a hard job, for there were so many branches to serve, and for the convenience of the other staffs, the books also have to be sorted by their size. Some books may also come with a CD or a small brochure, and they had to be sorted separately as well. At first, my brain couldn’t register all the twelve/fifteen traits of a book that differentiated one group to another, and I was more of a hindrance than a help to the other workers. But, then I was more or less familiar with the rules, and my pace sped up a little.

Sorted books.

The reserved shelves

Me shelving them

Books to-be-shelved.

Since there were so many books to sort, the other staffs, were not so gentle with the books, and also there were taped notes on each book to mark the place where it came from, and we would have to remove the tapes as well. But there are book covers that were vulnerable, and when you rip the tapes off, bits of the covers would come off with the strands of tapes as well, but the others didn’t seem to care… I knew that they were in a hurry, but some of the books even had the titles ripped off, and to me, it was painful as it seemed…

Throughout the four hours, I was asking for all the different sorts of jobs I could do when you work in a library, including the books sorting I mentioned, and also registering them, putting them back on the shelves, etc. It was a lot, but no matter how damaged the books were, they were still nice working companions.

Near the end of my volunteering work, Cathy texted me that she needed my help for a book. During the winter break, she has her psychology assignment to do, but she would need three books as reference to complete it, while our school only allows two books for one student per borrow. I first filled out the form of applying for a librarian card, and then went to the nearest computer to see if there were any books left that Cathy wanted (The Interpretation of Dreams by Sigmund Freud).

Turned out only three of the branches of Taipei Public Library had the book she was looking for, so I had to take the MRT once again for Cathy’s book. It’s another thirty minutes of traveling distance, and it was such a relief that I could actually find the book, instead of treading up and down in vain.

True that each branch of the libraries has its own traits.

Finally found you! After ten minutes of clueless searching

It was a day surrounded by different books, and though it cast a new light on the work as a real librarian, I still enjoyed it immensely, immersing myself in books I barely know, feeling content with the new experiences I gained.

Continuing on Maurice

This is the most difficult book to read in several months! What I did not say about this book was that, there are a lot of words I haven’t uploaded to my personal word bank, and hence, I was having trouble comprehending every detail, while such a nuisance was it to look every word up while reading, as it disrupted the continuum of the story. There are words that I felt was crucial, and I did look them up in the first place, but for the other descriptive words I didn’t understand, I took my little whiteboard out and jotted them down, and looking them up all at once after a fraction of reading.

I have yet finished the book, but maybe tomorrow (It’s Thursday night at the moment) I will push myself into finishing it.

In the latter half of the book, I was pondering a question, “Is homosexuality to be altered?” I had this dilemma because one of the characters in the book one day suddenly found that he didn’t feel the same appeal towards men as he used to; instead, his passion for women increased at an incredulous rate. It was not quite what I anticipated to happen, so to make sure I re-read the whole chapter once again. Then again. Then, I put the book down and began to think. All this time, we have heard the infamous “forced treatments” of homosexuality around the world. Though there is no such thing in Taiwan, words travel. Before I read this book, I was determined that homosexuality is not to be changed, involuntarily or not, for that is was you are born with, and no reason is there to change anything. However, after thinking the matter over, I found that I was wrong, and so are the forced treatments still.

What I got incorrectly is that believing that chasing homosexuality away and that suddenly realizing being drawn to the same gender is just a phase could never be possible.

I then thought that there are also people who were once hetero, but so out of the blue went into a gay relationship. Why can it not go backward? True, we have the right to choose the people we love, regardless of class, race, color, gender, etc. So, it would be just a false assumption of mine to think that gay people cannot one day be in love with the opposite sex.

People may be born different, but no people should be deprived of options.

The protagonist, Maurice, lived in an era filled with bias and also was it a time when classes between people and strict religious beliefs still existed. Through the outdated and unequal society, Maurice was about to drown, when there is occasionally a person or two who pulled him up a bit but soon let go. Inside the books, there were also discussions about theology and politics, and some of the parts I still cannot understand. One thing sure is that Maurice lived in a time when gay is still a name of crime, and it was like cuffs of pressure, letting him be the one he really is. In the end of the book, he let go all his burden- his job, his steady social status, his inner resistance- and he was finally happy. Though I am sure that since he was still in the time where everything is a problem, hardship would still roil at him and Alec, I hope that they do overcome it.

Movie Date with Friends

On Thursday, I met up with two of my junior high friends, one called Henry and the other Daniel, for an occasion I rarely do: movie going.

They are one of the few friends from my past with whom I'm still regularly meeting(at least once a semester)

This is a picture of them I took during lunch time.

They've known each other longer than I know either of them.

They had become friends since elementary, and though we three came from the same elementary school, I only get to know them after that. It was a fortunate thing for me, getting to acquaint both of them and actually getting along rather well.

Daniel and I were in the same class in middle school, while Henry and I acquainted through our English teacher.

That's another story, though. Three years cannot be summed up with a paragraph or two, right?

The movie we watched was chosen by me (privilege given by the duo, who claimed that it was a belated birthday celebration, and also I was the one who had the free admission tickets): The Last Recipe, a Japanese film that featured one of my favorite Japanese actor: Hidetoshi Nishijima (=>)

The second on the left is the actor I like :)

It was a touching movie, about how a skilled but arrogant chef found the way to go on with his life through the series of escapades of searching for the lost recipe created to beat any other on the world.

The outcome and the plotting were quite impressing, and since it was a movie about food, we were bound to be bombarded with food, food, and still food. But one trait of Japanese movie is that if they want to make you feel any sort of emotion, no matter what sort of topic it was about, they can achieve it in several scenes. It was a moving story, and though I was practically asking the other two to come with me without considering whether they would like the movie or not, they seemed to enjoy it quite a lot as well.

There are a lot of friends who care for me, and I have always been grateful; Henry and Daniel are, too. They are graceful, understanding, and compassionate. There are people I know who don’t get along with them, and we have the usual friendly banters. But most of all, especially Henry, listens. He listens when I complain. I felt carefree when I’m with them, and though we don’t often contact even via social media, we would catch up soon enough.

Too general, I know, that it felt like something I copied and pasted from the website “Definition of a good friend”, but they could really do those, and I hope that I would be able to do so as well.

Since this latter part was plagued by the clichéd sentences, I think it won’t be any different if I just add one more.

Hope this friendship can go on forever. (Cheesy, I understand)

End for Now

I still have the topic of going to the Taipei International Book Fair 2018 to write about, but I have written a lot already, and once again, I am out of time.

More than three weeks of winter break is almost over, and I am a bit reluctant to admit that.

Next week would be the New Year celebration.

Sincerely,

Hugo