last night i had my second brush with the law, only this time it was more than just a brush. this time there was a uniformed officer involved, and a plainclothes guy from the “Foreign Affairs Division”. the latter spoke fairly good English, but the uniformed officer’s lack of such skill made my ride in his car even more awkward than it would have been otherwise.
he had the lights on, but no siren, thankfully—i suppose he thought there was no need at that point. indeed, there had been enough sirens earlier. we had been at the church talent show and getting ready to perform our “extravaganza” from “Saturday’s Warrior”. that alone should be enough to get a person a ride in a paddy wagon i guess, but there’s a lot more to the story than just that. we were waiting for the final member of our troupe to show up with all the technical equipment that we would need, and she was over an hour late. she has only been in Taiwan about a month and we figured at first that she was just having a hard time finding the church—everywhere here looks the same.
we’d pretty much given up on her and abandoned our hopes of performance glory after she was 90 minutes late, and that’s just when the cops showed up. they told us she’d been involved in a scooter accident and was at the hospital just down the street, and that she’d been so disoriented that she could only think to say the name of the church; she couldn’t even remember her own name.
fortunately, she was in the emergency room at what is possibly the best hospital in the country, the China Medical University, and it only took us about five minutes to run over there to give her a blessing. that’s where we met the nice officers of the law, who were looking for the driver who had cut her off, and who gave me a ride back to her scooter to pick it up.
i’m sorry, had you thought i was being arrested? i wasn't. she was pretty shocked, but no real damage done. her face was a bit cut up and her shoulder hurt, but it could have been worse. it was very interesting to be in a Taiwanese ER, there were lots of people just milling about and there was no sense that anything was “Protected Health Information”. i was talking to my friends Mike and Chris about what i did at Loma Linda, and there was a 12-lead EKG sitting on the counter that i kept pointing at. the resident physician just picked it up and handed it to me! that would never happen in the States.
ah, the wonderful English translations available in Taiwan. this one comes from the emergency room at the China Medical University Hospital, and is dedicated to the folks at Loma Linda.
yesterday was quite a day altogether, in fact. after my morning class i went to Taichung to meet my friend Zac, who had told me about some batting cages in town. i was game for a little stress relief, so after lunch we hit some baseballs. my body is aching seriously right now, but it was a lot of fun.
i developed a blister on my left thumb from hitting, and riding the motorcycle over to Tesco had made it burst. my search for band-aids in the store was fruitless, so i tried my hand at asking for help. i found a guy who looked like he might be interested in practicing his English, and used hand gestures and broken phrases, along with a demonstration of the injury, to get some idea of where the first aid section was. he led me halfway across the enormous store and eventually away from all the merchandise to the very last checkout stand. i wondered if i was to be quarantined and kept away from the other customers, but instead he broke out the mother of all first aid kits and cleaned and dressed my wound himself! i was stunned to say the least, but grateful to Mr Kevin Hsiao for saving me some kwai. talk about customer service.
but what about thezen? yesterday i had to learn the art of motorcycle maintenance. i was driving through Feng Yuan and the chain slipped off in the middle of town. i had a few onlookers who offered their advice—in Chinese—on how to fix it. it turned out to be very easy and quick, if messy, but kind of a pain. apparently i just need to get the chain tightened, so i had it easy compared to the motorized problems of some.
it all turned out okay though: late last night we were all feeling pretty peckish after a few hours at the hospital, so we treated ourselves to a little TGI Friday’s. i don’t ordinarily enjoy that place so much, but yesterday it had some seriously zen qualities.
he had the lights on, but no siren, thankfully—i suppose he thought there was no need at that point. indeed, there had been enough sirens earlier. we had been at the church talent show and getting ready to perform our “extravaganza” from “Saturday’s Warrior”. that alone should be enough to get a person a ride in a paddy wagon i guess, but there’s a lot more to the story than just that. we were waiting for the final member of our troupe to show up with all the technical equipment that we would need, and she was over an hour late. she has only been in Taiwan about a month and we figured at first that she was just having a hard time finding the church—everywhere here looks the same.
we’d pretty much given up on her and abandoned our hopes of performance glory after she was 90 minutes late, and that’s just when the cops showed up. they told us she’d been involved in a scooter accident and was at the hospital just down the street, and that she’d been so disoriented that she could only think to say the name of the church; she couldn’t even remember her own name.
fortunately, she was in the emergency room at what is possibly the best hospital in the country, the China Medical University, and it only took us about five minutes to run over there to give her a blessing. that’s where we met the nice officers of the law, who were looking for the driver who had cut her off, and who gave me a ride back to her scooter to pick it up.
i’m sorry, had you thought i was being arrested? i wasn't. she was pretty shocked, but no real damage done. her face was a bit cut up and her shoulder hurt, but it could have been worse. it was very interesting to be in a Taiwanese ER, there were lots of people just milling about and there was no sense that anything was “Protected Health Information”. i was talking to my friends Mike and Chris about what i did at Loma Linda, and there was a 12-lead EKG sitting on the counter that i kept pointing at. the resident physician just picked it up and handed it to me! that would never happen in the States.
ah, the wonderful English translations available in Taiwan. this one comes from the emergency room at the China Medical University Hospital, and is dedicated to the folks at Loma Linda.
yesterday was quite a day altogether, in fact. after my morning class i went to Taichung to meet my friend Zac, who had told me about some batting cages in town. i was game for a little stress relief, so after lunch we hit some baseballs. my body is aching seriously right now, but it was a lot of fun.
i developed a blister on my left thumb from hitting, and riding the motorcycle over to Tesco had made it burst. my search for band-aids in the store was fruitless, so i tried my hand at asking for help. i found a guy who looked like he might be interested in practicing his English, and used hand gestures and broken phrases, along with a demonstration of the injury, to get some idea of where the first aid section was. he led me halfway across the enormous store and eventually away from all the merchandise to the very last checkout stand. i wondered if i was to be quarantined and kept away from the other customers, but instead he broke out the mother of all first aid kits and cleaned and dressed my wound himself! i was stunned to say the least, but grateful to Mr Kevin Hsiao for saving me some kwai. talk about customer service.
but what about thezen? yesterday i had to learn the art of motorcycle maintenance. i was driving through Feng Yuan and the chain slipped off in the middle of town. i had a few onlookers who offered their advice—in Chinese—on how to fix it. it turned out to be very easy and quick, if messy, but kind of a pain. apparently i just need to get the chain tightened, so i had it easy compared to the motorized problems of some.
it all turned out okay though: late last night we were all feeling pretty peckish after a few hours at the hospital, so we treated ourselves to a little TGI Friday’s. i don’t ordinarily enjoy that place so much, but yesterday it had some seriously zen qualities.
No comments:
Post a Comment