Summer Vacation Day 54-60: A Week in a Day and Goodbye (For Now)

Hello, Tim!

This letter might be a bit more special than the others;

This is the last letter for the summer.

Wait, what?

I know, I know, and I’m saying this with a wave of my hand.

The previous letter was dated the 22^nd of August, Wednesday, but in fact, today is already on the twenty-ninth, and tomorrow would be our first day of school, and the very words spell ‘the beginning of all chaos’. If I had done the vowed ‘a letter every day’, I would be keeping up with the schedule very closely. However, there were days in which I had just let the ‘lazy me’ kick in and skip a letter or two on this day or that.

With the school on the second day in view, I figured that giving a ‘condensed’ recount of the last several days was necessary. After school starts, I would only be able to write a blog post occasionally, which, for now, I am thinking about once a week. However, I would still have to see if a weekly post would fit into the crazy routine in the future.

Without further ado, let’s start!

ON the 24th Friday, my mom got a job! Again, she got a job at 7-11, although there is a little distance between the workplace and our house, she was relieved and happy that she finally would come out of the unemployed state. My dad returned in the middle of the night. He was hungry and in need of some midnight snack (as usual), so I cooked some tiny dumplings for him. I kept on writing my blog posts after that, and as I remember, my eyes closed at about three in the morning. I didn’t know that my dad had something on my mind right then.

The next day, the 25^th Saturday, with enough sleep until ten o’clock, I spent a day that happened to be the Taiwanese Ghost festival. Mom stayed at her brother’s place to help prepare meals, and I went to my grandma’s with my dad, who hadn’t been back since New Year because of the busy job.

Mom and Dad

My dad would be unemployed soon. It was a big shock to me, for I thought my dad’s job was a stable job. Being a ship mechanic is what my dad is good at, and there was not once I thought he would be taken off the job. But this is just how it is, my dad said. He said that there are also others waiting to work on the ship, and he would be soon looking for another ship to work on soon. I hope he does.

My aunt is sick. Her high fever happened in the midnight, and she was given antibiotics when addressed to in the emergency room. When we got to my grandma’s place, she was asleep. We kept telling her to take sick leaves on Monday to have a more thorough check in the hospital, but she was quite stubborn and insisted that she had to be at work on Monday.

On the 26^th of August, Sunday, Dad set off for his last trip on the boat he had been on for over six months. There was a blood-donate bus around the corner of the intersection next to my house.

In Taiwan, the age restriction for blood donating is seventeen years old, meaning that I was eligible of becoming a blood donor!

Get your ID cards, for we are going to spill some blood! :D

I practically bounced up and down all the way to the bus. I was informed that the computers inside were facing a temporary meltdown, so we sat there and waited for a rough twenty minutes. I was then handed a sheet of form that I had to fill in. A part of it was my basic information, while the other part was about some of the medical experiences. I was told to be as honest as possible, and I said that I had some medical treatments for the stomach in May, some braces adjustments on the previous Thursday. The next part of the sheet was a checklist of all the things that would make you a high risk for AIDS.

An A4 sheet of questions you have to answer.

Now it was this part that really got me into thinking. On the checklist, there was one thing you mustn’t do if you want to become a blood donor if you’re a male: having sexual intercourse with another man, or MSM, according to Red Cross.

I know the initial intent when this regulation was established, but I still find it unjust. Being gay doesn’t always mean that you have a high risk of getting A.I.D.S. It would be totally unfair if you want to donate blood, but you can’t because of your sexual orientation. Take me for example. I am going to be completely honest, but I intend to be a consistent and frequent blood donor, but that is never going to stop me from being on a date with a guy. That is what I believe in. I would really like to ramble on for another paragraph or two or even three, but I have to get back to my story.

I was then sent onto the bus, had my blood pressure tested, and then I was asked about my braces.

‘So you had that altered less than a week ago, hadn’t you?’ The doctor asked me. (translation: Don’t go to the dentist a week before your blood donation.)

Skip the little disgruntled but not-ready-to-give-up arguments and the act of the doctor’s please-stop-arguing-here-is-a-list-of-what-you-cannot-do-before-you-donate-blood. As a result, I got off the bus after been in there for only a brief ten minutes. I was so excited about this, from the possibility of helping people and the notion of having a thick need stuck in me while feasting on my blood like an over-sized mosquito. I was so bummed, and as a consolation, Mom treated me to some ice cream.

Next week, I would be well off the dentist thing, and I would go to the nearest blood donating center and have my blood taken. It is a must-do.

Consolation ice cream

On the 27^th, I tried making some earl grey tea jelly after going to a nearby supermarket with a new brand of earl grey (which was still not the one). I would like to talk more about my thing with earl grey and I, but I’m afraid this tale would have to wait a little longer.

The making of tea jelly was not that difficult. You boil a pot of water and add agar powder and stir until it is completely dissolved. I then dropped four packets of Twining’s earl grey inside the 1.5-liter water. You cool it down, and you have some supposedly nice tea jelly.

There was only one thing- it was not tea-flavored enough. It still had a cool texture, though. In fact, I’m eating it right now!

I'm happy; I have jelly.

Fast forward to the 28^th, Tuesday. We had to go back to school for some before-school school cleanup. It was a class thing, and we were assigned FOURTEEN teacher’s office when only ELEVEN of us showed up! Candy and I took two of the offices and here are some pictures.

I promise that Candy wasn't at all upset or whatsoever; it was just an accidental capture of her face.

William, one of those who didn’t show up at the right time finished his job later than we did, but we later met up at a nearby café to study for the whole afternoon:

The guy who woke up five minutes before the photot was taken.

It was the longest duration of study in the afternoon for the whole week!

For today, the last day of summer vacation, I was sitting at the desk, typing furiously on the computer, trying to tell seven-days-worth of story into one little post.

This concludes the amazing adventure of this summer vacation.

Maybe that this was not comparable to the awesome escapade to England last year, but the truth be told, this is one of the highlights of the year!

Starting from tomorrow, I would no longer be constantly updating my blog, but I would try to be as active as possible.

How was your vacation?

Sincerely,

Hugo

Summer Vacation Day 53: A Quite-nothing-Happened Day and a Kid at Home

Hello, Tim!

These days have been hot like it is summer in Taiwan.

Wait. It IS summer.

Summers in Taiwan had already programmed me into having winter as my favorite season.

At least I won’t sweat as much.

8/22, Wednesday

Today, we only had to take care of Aiden, who still needed a day of ‘resting’ before he could go to school again.

As it turned out, Sophie didn’t catch the stomach flu at all! Her parents were still skeptical about the whole flu thing from the kids’ doctor, so they asked my mom to bring her to a dermatologist to check whether it was just some skin problems instead.

Hands dermatitis, it was.

So, with Sophie at school, Aiden was relatively easier to control, making our lives easier.

I was chatting with Allison online in the evening, and we nagged at ourselves of not having used enough time for studying, so we agreed on having the same Chinese studying process so we could just prod the other into doing more studying.

This is all for today.

Summer Vacation Day 52: Day and Fréro Delavega

Hello, Tim!

The kids are still sick, with the diagnosis of scarlet fever for Aiden and the 70% of occurrence of stomach flu for Sophie, meaning that no matter how expensive their school tuition fee is, they had to stay at home for at least another day.

8/21, Tuesday

Remember the whole ‘Sophie and Aiden were like two little devils’ part that came as the main topic for yesterday’s post? Well, now all you have to do is copy the whole thing and paste it back on today’s list, starting from eight-thirty in the morning and all the way to the evening. It was too exhausting to even talk about.

In the evening, I was in my study, writing blogs (I really do hope I was studying) while listening to French songs.

I have started listening to French songs since I had started taking French classes, and almost every other day, I would be on YouTube, hounding for new songs that really connect to me. There are two types of singers in my world. One kind of singer has several singles that really get to you, but for most of his/her other songs would mean nothing to me; The other kind are the singers that really have styles for their songs which just matches to my appetite for music, and like a buffet, I would normally sweep and devour all the songs they had in the past, careful not to lose grasp of any of them. Sometimes it’s the unique voice the singers hold, sometimes the poetically fluid lyrics, sometimes even the melodies of the songs alone- Every song you have grown to fanatically love and believe in are something you can call a part of your personality. My all-time favorite one-man band Owl City falls into the latter category.

For several months now, I have grown to be fond of a French group called Fréro Delavega, a two-person group, consisting of Jérémy Frérot and Florian Delavega (now you know where the group name came from). They have all elements of a song that just ring all the way up to my brains. Melodies with ever-changing style, but managed to be of a hollow, haunting characteristic. The voice of the two vocals intertwining and coming atop each other, the lyrics sweet and vague that leave you wondering.

Jérémy Frérot et Florian Delavega

There was a song of theirs, called Le chant des Sirènes, or the Song of the Sirens. There was not really a story fitted into the song, but some description of the sea, the sand, and how it all correlates to the memories and the past that blended together. Here is the chorus of the song:

Quand les souvenirs s’emmêlent,

Les larmes me viennent,

Et le chant des sirènes me replonge en hiver

Oh, mélancolie crulle,

Harmonie fluette

Euphorie solitaire…

which (in my own attempted translation) basically meant:

When the memories mingled together

The tears come to me

And the song of the siren sends me plunging back into winter

Oh, the cruel melancholy,

The high-pitched harmony,

And the euphoria of the solitude…

I just am still horrible at translating, I know, but the picture of the lyrics was there, and it was a beautiful sight of the waves crashing into the coastal rocks, bringing and taking away the sand at the beach as they come and go. Someone with a white shirt that flowing at the rhythm of the sea wind was standing atop one of the rocks, staring into the horizon with such misty eyes. This is what I see when listening to the song. I love songs that would bring pictures to me, and almost every song of this Fréro Delavega have this magic bestowed upon them.

I then surfed on the Internet, hoping to find some news of their latest announcements, hoping to have some wind of a possible new single or even a new album in the future, but all I found was that the duo had split up at the end of 2017.

It struck me hard, and I went on the Internet once more for some explanations. I typed in English, but no article in English showed up. I then typed in ‘Pourquoi Fréro Delavega se sépare’ and tried to read a report of their interview.

From the way I read the interview, it seemed as if one of the duos, Florian was not adapting well to the life ‘in the media’, and it turned out unfit for his lifestyle, while Jérémy Frérot said that he had no intent to leave the music career and that we would continue solo.

I love the music group so much, so it was so sad seeing them separating. But that’s life, isn’t it?

As much as they are singers, celebrities, they still are people, and people leave the others’ sides very often, often so soon.

Listening to many of the other Fréro Delavega songs, and Jérémy’s first single as a solo artist, I did the dishes from dinner, immersing myself in the entrancing tunes.

This is all for today.

Summer Vacation Day 51: Sick Aiden and (Spoiler Alert) 'Sick' Sophie

Hello, Tim!

Today was another Monday, a second last Monday that comes from the dying summer break.

Good grief.

I am so not ready.

8/20, Monday

Aiden was sick. Again.

Every time the kids face a brand-new place, they would easily become sick. For example, when Aiden started his kindergarten for the first day, he caught the flu so bad he had to take a sick leave. Now, he just moved, and he caught scarlet fever? I mean, we all know that kids are sensitive to environmental changes, but wasn’t this a bit too much? Kids are so poor, needing to go through all these while their surroundings kept changing like this.

Look at the cute and asleep boy.

Scarlet fever was not scarce among children and adolescents. It is a germ-caused syndrome that gives you the rash on every inch of your skin, little red dots riddled across your back. You might have a fever and would possibly feel nauseous and so on. According to some brief introduction on the Net, if not treated properly, it could lead to permanent impairment of vital organs like the heart and the livers.

We took care of him- all lively and bouncing, without a sign of feeling sick- while he was behaving well until Mom got a call from the kids’ mom, saying that the school asked her to pick Sophie up from school at noon, even though she was supposed to have four more hours of class. Why was that?

‘A suspected case of stomach flu,’ was the answer I got from Sophie’s school nurse when I arrived at Daoming International School hurriedly in a taxi twenty minutes later. The nurse showed me that Sophie said that her hands felt itchy, and there were some weird red dots forming on her palms. To avoid carrying the (supposedly) highly contagious flu around the school was not what the school wanted, so that was why Sophie was sent home like this.

Sophie and the barely functioning mask.

I had to state that when Aiden was the only person to take of, he was both understanding, loving, energetic (seriously, the only thing that proved that he was indeed sick were the little rash dots on his arms and calves.) but well-behaved. It was a turnaround description with his big sister present.

There were rude comebacks -some utterly disrespectful- coming from Sophie, and the obstinate non-cooperation from the sister-present-Aiden. They wouldn’t even behave when waiting for just a trifle FIVE minutes at the waiting seats at the hospital.

My mom and I tried everything- ranging from stern shouting, very serious scolding, punishing time-out, serious scolding WITH punishing time-out, all the way to no-snack/IPad threats and nice talks, putting-a-carrot-in-front-of-a-donkey-style tactics, talking sense (pfft) … But none of them worked, and it ‘amused’ us every time. I know that one of the definitions of the word ‘kid’ was ‘acting upon the exact… opposite words you say in an imperial sentence,’ but for real…

Where do we find a Nanny McPhee?

I love kids, and I love almost everything about them, but I certainly do hope not ending up with the devious side of Sophie and Aiden (their angel side are very sweet, mind you) as kids.

This is all for today.

Summer Vacation Day 50: Finnick and Billy

Hello, Tim!

According to the chat history, my math tutor texted me at four in the morning, saying that he had just finished his work. He asked if we could make a rain check on the class that ought to be had today. Despite the postponed class, it was still far from an eventless day.

8/19, Sunday

Having no class in the morning, I had a rather free morning to myself. I was doing out when executing the art of doing basically nothing when the doorbell buzzed at about two in the afternoon.

Good, That meant only one thing.

I poked my head out to the balcony, finding myself looking at a certain yellow truck parked on our side of the road.

It was the yellow from the IKEA icon.

Look who's here, albeit of the rain? (repsect)

One cool thing about IKEA’s delivery system is that the charge for the delivery is determined by the money you spent on furniture in total instead of the actual weight of each object.

Billy (the Bookshelf) and the desk are not like the chair my mom and I successfully put together last week; we had had enough trouble doing that job already. Fear not, for IKEA would be there to help!

At a proportion of 6.5 percent, IKEA would charge you the cost of the price of furniture to help set it up. It was a very generous and considerate offer, given that maybe half of the people (like me) don’t know how to put some needed tools to good use.

Welcome to the live show: Billy in the Making!

Look at that speed! The person was assembling the bookshelf with such efficiency that he could not be captured on camera! (hyperbole, but quite literally)

In one swift heft, Billy was set in an upright position, as sturdy as ever.

About five minutes later, the two panels of the glass doors were installed as well. All thanks to the gentleman in the picture.

I stood at the door of my study, watching as the person tore up the boxes and efficiently lay everything on the floor. Seemingly, he had the instructions imprinted in his head; without the help of the manual that came with Billy, the main part of Billy was standing right next to my other bookshelf (which, later the day, I named it Finnick. DO NOT judge.)

This is the view you get upon entering my study. I know. It would feel better if you can see the front of my shelves upon entering, but sometimes, compromises have to be made.

The man left after the desk was also prepared, and then came my part.

Finnick the bookshelf was inherently deeper than Billy, making it capable of accommodating two rows of books each layer. When all layers were filled with two rows of books, I knew that it was time to get a second.

Billy, on the other hand, was not as deep as Finnick, but had the height in every layer to put even my biggest length of the book. I spent a total of three hours moving books from Billy to Finnick, and rearranging the positioning of them, hoping to get them more pleasing to the eye. My back hurt when I was finally done, and there are still some placements of the books I was not entirely agreeing with, but it would have to wait for another day.

(Hours later) The view you see when sitting at the desk; Magnificent, isn't it?

This is Billy.

And I am sure you all have met Finnick.

Welcome to the family, Billy.

This is all for today.

Summer Vacation Day 49: Anime Convention and IKEA

Hello, Tim!

I’ve always thought that the expression T.G.I.F. is a celebration to rejoice in the notion of a relaxing and carefree weekend.

Workless Saturday?

My apologies, Sir. It just doesn’t ring a bell.

8/18, Saturday

I bounced up from my bed the second the alarm set off, flounced my hands frantically trying to locate the ringing phone to switch the alarm off.

What kind of events did I sign myself up to have to wake up at 7:30 in the early morning?

On about Tuesday or Wednesday, Cathy told me that there would be a Japanese animation convention starting this Friday and asked me if I wanted to go along with her and her brother.

Sure thing, I thought. Everything deserves a first time, right?

I don’t talk about this a lot, but I do watch a lot of anime. The ones I came across on accident, the ones that were shared by either Cathy or Allison and the ones that I used to enjoy with Mom while munching on some popcorn. Anime has become a part of my lifestyle, just like how deeply my precious books have taken root.

We met at the metro station at nine o’clock, and in the metro, Cathy warned me that it would be a total chaos in the convention center; ‘It has always been like this,’ Cathy had said.

Barely out of the metro station, there were people so eager to get to the convention center faster by taking two flights upstairs at a time when they could've taken the escalator.

That was no exaggeration. The exhibit opened at exactly ten o’clock, and we got there at 9:30 but it took us about twenty minutes to get into the approximately football-court-sized indoor square when there are eight entrances!

Where do we even start lining up?

It was a crazy sight, inside and out of the exhibit. If inside an ant hole leads to a lot of ants lined up and scattered around, going into this area and another, carrying things that looked heavier than themselves, yes. I would say the whole exhibit was like a live show on ant society.

Due to the large flow of people traversing the convention, the exhibition organizers came up with systems to control the people in different sections. I assumed they had a system; Maybe they really did, but I just couldn’t see it. The place was so crowded that it would need a solid five minutes to find the end of the waiting line and another ten minutes and above to actually gain entrance. Sometimes you would walk into a section after a long wait, but to your disappointment, you didn’t find anything that strikes your fancy, so all you could do was walking out of the area in resignation.

Cathy and her younger brother browsing the goods from Pokemon.

I ended up getting a file that has Conan characters printed on it (it is a detective manga in which a high school kid was turned into a seven-year-old for getting the wrong effects when was fed an experimental poison in an attempted murder) and two metal-material bookmarks of Yuri! on Ice, a sport manga featuring figure ice skating, one which Allison and I both love, and apparently, one of the bookmarks was for her.

Full-sized plastic figures of characters from a girls' game; there are some of the things they selled I wanted to get, but there was just no time lining up.

I indeed had other things in mind I wanted to buy, but it was either too out of my league in terms of the price or I just didn’t have the time to wait in line, for I had just another thing to attend to.

At around twelve-thirty, I left the convention early to meet with my aunt and uncle.

Remember about the IKEA story in which we had trouble getting the two glass doors for Billy? Today was the day to fix the problem.

The IKEA we went to was much smaller than the one we went to last week because they have a separated storage unit for all the bulkier furniture that are larger in volume that is in Taoyuan. It worked for us because we were going to have Billy and my desk delivered either way.

Still, having the need-to-buy in our minds didn’t explain why we got home with two extra cutting boards, a wooden spatula, a writing board for desk protection, and an average-sized floor mat.

Wait. We do know why we bought the mat! It was so fluffy that you would hate to find out they do not sell blankets in this material. It was so fluffy that if felt like it was sucking you in. Do not take just my words; take a look at this:

 

Mom. I need in to get my T-shirt!

My mother, first to spot the mats for sale, had been standing on it for more than two minutes, wriggling her toes to feel the softness.

The order of Billy, as well as my new desk, would arrive tomorrow. I couldn’t wait!

This is all for today.

Summer Vacation Day 48: Kids and Their Legos

Hello, Tim!

Today was the last day of our summer course!

However…

Our school starts right on the thirtieth of August, which would be just around the corner.

8/17, Friday

Today was also take care of your ‘nephew and niece for the whole afternoon’ day.

Their school bus came at the scheduled 16:10, and from the opened door of the big, bulky carriage, we could see that Sophie and Aiden were sitting side by side, and Sophie at the window seat, who very obviously just woke up from sleep, went right past Aiden, struggling with all the things he had with him and also unbuckling the seatbelt, and she didn’t even offer to help!

That was unacceptable for me. I chastised her for doing so (which was a reasonable thing to do, wasn’t it?). Sophie, still heavy with sleep, responded in a very rude tone (unacceptable, for the second time) that ‘I just didn’t want to, what can you do about it?’

Until we got into the valley, I scorned her for being so rude, groggy from sleep or not. She wasn’t listening, instead stayed quiet as a form of protest and her petite disdain, sulking her way back home. What should I do to get this disobedient young lady?

She eventually cooled down, and I coaxed her into talking something about her new school environment. Back in her house, Sophie went into her room and grabbed her metal box that was initially used to hold some Starbucks eggrolls. Inside the box was her Lego Treehouse Resort Set. She was halfway done with it, independently putting miniature plastic bricks into place, face forming scowls and muttering grunts when her hands swept off several brown blocks that were supposed to be the branches of the treehouse by accident. Aiden, meanwhile, was completely focused on his Lego F1 racecar he put together himself.

One of the little bits fell off, and he was trying to find out how to get it back in place.

I was watching them two the whole time, occasionally picking up several bricks that had yet joined to the model of the treehouse. Maybe it was just I had never asked, or it was just out of my league then, but I never had a piece of Lego in my hand throughout my childhood. I do remember seeing children trying to build Lego cars and so on, but it just occurred to me today that I had never had this in my childhood and seeing them playing so attentively with a gaze so keen, I felt like I had missed out on a fun phase in my life.

Treehouse: Under construction.

There is a claw machine store near our school (stores like that is just everywhere), and there is just one machine in particular that William really fancies. It is always filled with little figurines of the Lego people and a type of sticker you can collect. Once you collect all the stickers required, you would get a set of Legos that can be built into lands like some surface of a planet and so on, and William, as mentioned, it all crazy about that stuff. Every single time he walks by he would be lured inside and spend some shiny and round ten NT dollars, trying to collect and build up his own Lego empire.

Maybe I can go buy some Legos to make up for the lost childhood. :D

Extra: A while after the Legos, just ten minutes prior to the dinner, Aiden just decided to go 'Elsa' on himself and took all the plastic accessories of his sister.

'Have to... rock.. the Elsa look', one imaginary line that was not really spoken by Aiden.

This is all for today.